A long time ago, I think I mentioned in a comment to something that there was a project at the MIT Media Lab to keep a database of uncorroborated information about government officials, analogous to Ashcroft and Poindexter’s “Total Information Awareness” monstrosity.
The project had been written up in several places, including Wired and slashdot, but now it seems to have shut down.
Why? Lack of interest (we get the government we deserve), or were they shut down? I have no idea.
The TIA project (ephemistically renamed “Terorist Information Awareness”) seems to have disappeared from the DARPA site, too. Does that mean it has been abandoned, or just gone silent.
About Stearns
Howard Stearns works at High Fidelity, Inc., creating the metaverse.
Mr. Stearns has a quarter century experience in systems engineering, applications consulting, and management of advanced software technologies. He was the technical lead of University of Wisconsin's Croquet project, an ambitious project convened by computing pioneer Alan Kay to transform collaboration through 3D graphics and real-time, persistent shared spaces. The CAD integration products Mr. Stearns created for expert system pioneer ICAD set the market standard through IPO and acquisition by Oracle. The embedded systems he wrote helped transform the industrial diamond market. In the early 2000s, Mr. Stearns was named Technology Strategist for Curl, the only startup founded by WWW pioneer Tim Berners-Lee. An expert on programming languages and operating systems, Mr. Stearns created the Eclipse commercial Common Lisp programming implementation.
Mr. Stearns has two degrees from M.I.T., and has directed family businesses in early childhood education and publishing.
Well now, this just makes me feel good all over. I think next time I’m down at MIT I’ll see if I can track anybody down for a back story.