Ex Uno Plura is a blog with the goal of exploring arguments and ideas that are new and a bit cutting edge. Some of the topics that are explored include recent developments in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, machine learning, evolutionary adaptation, atheism (and its discontents), technology and the humanities, literature and literary theory, and a raft of other topics that register as experimental. The goal is to always try to do justice to the topic and contextualize it socially and as part of intellectual history.
Note that the title might be a translation mistake. I have conflicting information on this; maybe it should be Ex Uno Plures but others concur with Ex Uno Plura. At least it’s not as bad as some of the other guesses floating around, including a title by David Foster Wallace. Update via Giacomo Miceli:
I can confirm you it’s “Ex uno, plura”. Plura => Neutral noun (more things, many things) vs Plures => Numeral adjective (more, several).
My name is Mark Davis and I am an entrepreneur, computer scientist, and author. I split my time between homes in Portland and on the Oregon coast. My background ranges from an unusual upbringing in New Mexico, to teaching in the US Peace Corps, to running a performance art group, to working for Microsoft and XeroX PARC, and, recently, to startups in computational linguistics, big data analytics, and machine learning. I’ve got a graduate degree in the latter. I retired in 2015 from a role as a CTO and Distinguished Engineer at Dell Software Group following the sale of my startup company, Kitenga, one of the first big data analytics companies. I just resurrected a cognitive computing and deep learning startup focused on immersive entertainment and intelligent assistants. More details to come!
I am the author of a couple dozen scientific papers on a range of topics in machine learning, natural language processing, and search (though I haven’t written one in two decades!), a bunch of patents, and four novels. My first novel, Teleology, explored the impact of a technological singularity on the lives of twins. My second novel, Signals and Noise, tracks the life of a teenage hacker as he tries to unravel what is real and what is imaginary after discovering strange mind-controlling signals in the internet. Against Superheroes is a deep-dive into the experience of becoming and living as a superhero. It’s not always pretty. ¡Reconquista!, a farce of contemporary politics and society, launched in September of 2019. I am currently working on a number of projects, including a new post-apocalyptic and post-cyberpunk series named Quintessence of Rust. I also am working on a multimedia and multi-format project called Tusker Long. I plan to serialize additional work through this blog.
I also spend some time trail running and photographing around the world. You can check out my Instagram feed, here. Here’s a preview:
Hi there – do you by chance have an index of all posts somewhere? Also it looks like this blog is hosted on WP so I think it could potentially be easy to add email signups for new posts. Look forward to more of your writing!
Hi Alex, the existing indexing engine broke on an update recently, but I added both a Post Index and Category Index to the “hamburger” menu in upper right corner. I’m still optimizing it a bit…
Hi…I was a friend & colleague of Wirt. I found you via: https://exunoplura.com/tag/scholarship/
I enjoyed your description of him as an “unusual character” 🙂
There’s a minor typo: Wirt passed away in 2009, not 2010.
Were you aware that he created what was probably the first speech synthesizer for a personal computer?
(A few earlier synthesizers existed, but they were external/self-contained boxes costing many thousands of dollars).
Info at: http://www.sieler.com/aics
Do you happen to know where Wirt obtained his doctorates?
And, it came as a complete surprise to me to find that his name was apparently “Joseph Wirt Atmar III”!
thanks,
Stan Sieler
Hi Stan,
Thanks for the correction! I should have remembered the date better. Wirt had a PhD from NMSU in Electrical Engineering. He also pursued but did not complete a Biology PhD. The reasons are a bit murky but he nonetheless later had a number of graduate students in evolutionary biology and his publications were largely in that area later in life.
I was aware of the synthesizer project and even mentioned it, here:
https://exunoplura.com/2013/05/24/hits-and-mits/
You may have that document in your links too… I’ll check in a moment.
Best,
Mark
PS: The scholarship continues to this day. We have helped hundreds of kids in the last seven years or so.