Professor of computer science at Yale. Dr Gelernter's work on parallel programming, artificial intelligence, and information management has heavily influenced many of today's current generation tools; the programming language called "Linda" is used worldwide for parallel programming, and the central idea behind
LindaLanguage (
TupleSpace or
GenerativeCommunication), now forms the basis of the "
JavaSpaces" extension to Java being developed by Sun Microsystems.
His 1991 book
MirrorWorlds

(Oxford, ISBN 019507906X) outlined a network-based computing future similar to the Web-based Internet community that has since emerged. Dr Gelernter is the author of numerous books and articles on technology and the future of computing.
See his current work at
http://www.mirrorworlds.com/ and
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter/gelernter_index.html for his recently published manifesto.
Woops, make that
http://www.scopeware.com, now.
Interestingly, his last named means "more learned".
In what language?
In German, although practical applications of this word (as in "a more learned lesson") have yet to be found. --
KonradAnton (from Germany)
Perhaps a better translation would just be "learned", "skilled" or "educated" rather than "more learned".
Er ist gelernter Mechaniker. --
BorisMagocsi (also from Germany)
If reading his books you should be prepared for unexpected, rather jarring side trips into Prof. Gelernter's right-wing political opinions in the middle of technical discussions. It was disconcerting until I got used to skipping over them.
He was almost-fatally injured in 1993 when he opened a mailbomb from
UnaBomber. His right hand and eye were left permanently damaged.
EricFreeman was one of his students.
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