Hi, I'm Ben Sibelman, a software developer at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. This is me with my most recently acquired poster, which nicely sums up my desire for large-scale, long-term perspective, and one of my favorite T-shirts, which represents my belief in the power of Us. (To hear and read Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech shown illegibly in the photo, go here.)

Currently, I'm working on the Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free downloadable tool for organizing and sharing your favorite "digital memories" or works of photographic art.

My previous employer was the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), which is a bit of a misnomer these days: they sell mapmaking and geographic analysis software to corporations, governments, and other organizations. Some of this software is used for ecology and conservation work, but I ended up on the team that makes nautical charting software. Such is life.

But ESRI's CEO, Jack Dangermond, is a fervent environmentalist. As he is fond of saying, the geographic perspective is a global one, ideal for managing and sustaining the planet we call home. And that's my perspective, too: I think best on the general, large-scale, long-term level.

My goals are very ambitious: on this site, I'm writing a rough draft for what Harvey Mudd Professor Paul Steinberg calls a Thousand-Year Institution, one that could help maintain some of the core principles needed for a truly sustainable civilization. The working title for the institution is The Church of Gaia/Earthseed, although it is not a religion in the strict sense, as it grows mainly from a scientific worldview. My reason for choosing to take on some of the framework of a religion is simply that religions have proven their ability to persevere over the millennia. A few governments have done the same, but founding a new government isn't nearly as easy. :-)

You can also check out

my website, Living Worlds Productions

and

my blog, Thoughts on the Environmental Crisis.

--Scifiben 22:56, 3 August 2007 (PDT)