Keynote Talk

Marc Stiegler is both a science fiction author and a developer of secure collaborative software systems. His sf works include "Valentina", a finalist for the Hugo Award; "David's Sling", a finalist for the Prometheus Award; and "EarthWeb", a more recent effort that describes a future in which the Web, not national governments, forms the principal underpinning fabric for human civilization. "Earthweb" has been used as a classroom text for teaching the future of computing. His non-fiction "Programming Languages for the IBM PC" was selected by Byte Magazine as one of 20 key books on the PC shortly after the PC became the dominant computing platform.

Mr. Stiegler's efforts to build collaborative systems predate the term "worldwide web". In 1988 he served as director of development for Xanadu, the original vision of a global hypertext system that influenced much early hypertext research, including the work of Tim Berners-Lee. His 1990 article on Hypertext Publishing for Unix Review described a smoothly integrated collaborative environment which the Web still struggles to achieve.

Mr. Stiegler is currently a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs. His efforts there include development of Emily, a high-performance language specifically designed for the building of software systems that allow not only friends, but also strangers and even enemies, to work intimately together on shared goals with minimal fear of their minimally-trustworthy partners.