IEEE Spectrum July, 2011 - 6

iEEE mEdiA
Staff Director; PubliSher, IEEE SpEctrum

James a. Vick, j.vick@ieee.org

aSSociate PubliSher, SaleS & aDVertiSing Director

DaviD Kushner,
an IEEE Spectrum
contributing editor,
covers the
extraordinary case
of Gary McKinnon, who's been
accused of hacking into U.S.
military and NASA computers. In
"The Autism Defense" [p. 32],
Kushner explains that
McKinnon's lawyers have asked
for leniency based on his
diagnosis of Asperger's, a form of
autism. "The article explores
whatever link there may be
between engineering abilities and
Asperger's," says Kushner. "But I
don't mean to suggest that if you
have Asperger's, you're going to be
a cybercriminal."
Josh mcKible,
a.k.a. mckibillo, did
the illustrations for
"Turning Sweat Into
Watts" [p. 50]. His
art is inspired by instruction
manuals, both the really good
ones and the really bad. "The
thing that started me on this path
was in-flight safety cards," he says.
"They're so badly done, and
they're about such a terrifying
moment-the disconnect between
the style of information and what
you need just blew my mind."
Originally from New York City, he
now lives in Japan.
6

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * July 2011

William W.
mcmillan, who
heads the computer
science department
at Eastern Michigan
University, recalls being impressed
by the UCSD p-System when he
first came across the operating
system in the late 1970s. "In many
ways we went backward when we
went to MS-DOS," he says. He
recently decided to explore the
history of the p-System, in part
because it is conceptually similar
to Java. To his surprise, he found
evidence linking the two, as he
describes in "The Soul of the
Virtual Machine" [p. 44].
Joel e. moore,
author of
"Topological
Insulators" [p. 38],
received his Ph.D.
in physics from MIT and has been
on the faculty of the University of
California, Berkeley, since 2002.
He was part of the collaboration
that first predicted topological
insulators in three dimensions.
Moore says he's been "amazed" by
the subsequent flood of
experimental work in the field,
which among other things
confirmed the materials' existence
in 2008. "The hard work of many
other people connected our
mathematical conjecturing to
reality," he says.
JonaThan b.
spira, who wrote
about Internet TV
for this issue [p. 24],
is the founder of
Basex, a think tank that ponders
business productivity. In his book
Overload!, he describes information
overload as "death by a million
paper cuts." The book has a
curious effect on people: "On
flights, people start pouring their
hearts out, telling me how
overloaded they are. I become a
personal therapist," he says.

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aDVertiSing ProDuction Manager

felicia Spagnoli
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Senior aDVertiSing ProDuction coorDinator
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ieee Staff executiVe, PublicationS

anthony Durniak

iEEE BoArd of dirEctorS
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president@ieee.org

PreSiDent-elect gordon

W. Day
treaSurer harold flescher
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VicE prESidENtS
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ronald g. Jensen, President, IEEE-USA

diViSioN dirEctorS
hiroshi iwai (i); J. keith nelson (ii);
nim k. cheung (iii); Peter n. clout (iV);
Michael r. Williams (V); Jeffrey M. Voas (Vi);
enrique a. tejera M. (Vii); Susan k. land (Viii);
alfred o. hero iii (ix); Vincenzo Piuri (x)

rEgioN dirEctorS
charles P. rubenstein (1); ralph M. ford (2);
clarence l. Stogner (3); James n. riess (4);
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om P. Malik (7); Marko Delimar (8);
tania l. Quiel (9); Wai-choong Wong (10)

dirEctorS EmErituS
eric herz, theodore W. hissey

iEEE StAff
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james.prendergast@ieee.org

executiVe Director & coo
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huMan reSourceS betsy Davis, SPhr
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PublicationS anthony Durniak
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Jankowski

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Siegert

technical actiVitieS Mary Ward-callan
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Managing Director, ieee-uSa chris brantley
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iEEE puBlicAtioN SErVicES & productS BoArd
David a. hodges, Chair; tayfun akgul, John baillieul, Silvio e.
barbin, karen bartleson, Maja e. bystrom, celia l. Desmond,
tariq S. Durrani, Mohamed e. el-hawary, David a. grier,
lajos hanzo, elizabeth t. Johnston, hulya kirkici, russell J.
lefevre, Michael r. lightner, carmen S. Menoni, Pradeep Misra,
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rokne, gianluca Setti, curtis a. Siller, ravi M. todi, robert J. trew,
karl r. Varian, timothy t. Wong, Daniel S. yeung, Jacek M. Zurada

iEEE opErAtioNS cENtEr
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CloCkwise from top left: Jamie Hendry; kais al karimi; niC sHannon; Basex; mCkiBillo; BetH kelly

Tom Gibson
is a consulting
mechanical
engineer
specializing in
renewable energy and recycling
and a freelance writer covering
technology. He's also an avid
mountain biker and laments that
he didn't get to try out the
electricity-producing exercise
bicycles he describes in "Turning
Sweat Into Watts" [p. 50]. "But
I did take apart my wife's
StairMaster to see how typical
exercise machines work," he says.

Marion Delaney, m.delaney@ieee.org

http://spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2011