About

Who I Am Now

I'm a software developer, educator, and consultant who helps people work with AI thoughtfully. After 40+ years of programming and a career spanning data systems, APIs, and academic technology, I've come to focus on a question that matters more than ever: How do we use these powerful tools without losing our judgment, understanding, or responsibility?

I design and teach courses on AI literacy—not as vocational training, but as a form of critical thinking. My students range from teenagers to professionals, and the emphasis is always on verification, ownership, and human accountability. I also consult with individuals and organizations on adopting AI-aware workflows with appropriate guardrails.

My approach is guided by a simple idea: technology for community, care, and discovery.

Background

I hold a Ph.D. in biophysics and have worked at the intersection of technology, data, and education for most of my career.

At the UC Berkeley School of Information, I taught courses on APIs, mashups, and working with open data using Python. I co-wrote two influential reports on how the US government can improve its efforts to make data and services available through APIs.

I served as Integration Advisor for the Zotero Project, a widely-used open source research tool, and managed the Zotero Commons collaboration between George Mason University and the Internet Archive.

As Technology Architect for the Interactive University Project at UC Berkeley, I designed software to support learning, teaching, and research in collaboration with the California Digital Library.

I'm author of Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services (Apress) and was a contributing writer for ProgrammableWeb.

Speaking & Writing

I've been an invited speaker on technology topics at the Library of Congress, O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, American Library Association, Code4lib, Educause, and many other venues.

More recently, I've been writing and teaching about AI literacy, verification debt, and what it means to maintain human understanding in an age of capable machines.

Personal

I live in Albany, CA, just north of Berkeley. I'm an erstwhile tubaist, admirer of J.S. Bach, and son of industrious Chinese-Canadian restaurateurs. I approach my work with intellectual seriousness and humility—I'm still learning, and I care deeply about doing it well.