I have been involved in computers and networking for well over half my life -- I guess that makes me an old-timer. Not old enough to have used the pre-Internet (NCP) ARPAnet, but old enough to have used the ARPAnet and applied a vampire tap to an original Ethernet cable. I love the new networking technologies, too: IPv6 and multicasting will both catch on someday (soon). My programming mind was permanently warped by learning SETL at an early age (I was a senior in high school taking an intro CS course at NYU).

My interest in (natural) languages goes back even further; I have always loved learning languages and have tried my hand at more than a half-dozen of them (I am still competent in a few). The specific application of it to internationalization/localization grew out of my experience with the OLPC XO-1 computers I got for my daughter.

I have also developed an interest in online social communities and collaboration; not just the open source movement, but open data as well, which grew out of my participation in the MusicBrainz project. This has been informed by my informal anthropological experience as the life partner of an academic anthropologist and my participation in her fieldwork in Guatemala.