I am Garth Wolfendale, an Application Development Consultant with Microsoft Premier with a great deal of interest in Information technology research and development going forward. My background academically is in AI but practically I do not have much to do with it on a day to basis being much more involved in current and 'bleeding edge' technology. I used to have my own AI corporation in Australia before joining Microsoft.
The reason I've decided to add myself to the Research Community is that a lot of the ideas I had many years ago, that have stuck with me are coming about .. 20+ years later ,,,, One idea I had in the 70's (when I worked for DEC in Maynard Mass) was the idea of Information (data and processes) as a utility that is 'pumped' liked electricity .. and every home would have built in outlets (and inlets), searching and access to online functionality would then be a matter more of filtering than server based serach engines that we have today.
Also I gave a paper in 1979 modelling computing on ants (cooperating to solve problems, specialized ants that can be instantiated in large numbers etc) .. and that is coming about also .. so I decided to join the fray.