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User:StuHarris/biocode

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Stuart Harris is an English author, television documentary producer and pioneer in the social uses of the internet. He was born in Petts Wood, a commuter dormitory to the south of London. Since 1980 he has lived and worked in San Diego, California.

Education and early work

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Harris was educated at Tonbridge School and Queen Mary College of London University. He graduated with a B.Sc. (II-2 hons) in electrical engineering and physics. He had a short career as a stage actor, appearing most notably in Tony Richardson's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Court Theatre in London[1]. However, he failed to make enough of a name for himself to succeed in the highly competitive world of London theatre.

BBC Television

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From 1965-1980 he produced and directed television documentary content for BBC Television's Science & Features Dept., working first for the weekly magazine show Tomorrow's World and subsequently for BBC-2's prestigious strand Horizon. He produced and directed ten science documentary films for Horizon, some of which were also adapted by WGBH-TV for the PBS Network series Nova.

In the late 60s and 70s he became an acknowledged expert on spaceflight, and was one of the producers of the BBC's television coverage of the Apollo program missions 13-17 and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. He served as field producer for the BBC-TV coverage of STS-1, the first Space Shuttle mission, in April 1981[2].

Work as an independent

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After emigrating to California, Harris continued to produce and direct television documentaries as an independent, working from Beach Media Inc. of San Diego. His documentary The Neuron Suite won a blue ribbon at the Educational Film Library Association's American Film Festival 1983.

He also contributed to the literature of personal computing (see Published Works section,) and developed a computer application to assist production tasks in city magazines.

Social uses of the Internet

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Harris was intrigued by the explosive growth of the internet, spurred largely by the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, in 1993. He was quick to see the social and artistic possibilities of an instantaneous medium connecting people all over the world.

He became expert in the use of Internet Relay Chat, wrote the first book about it[3], and developed IRC into a theatrical medium. He formed the cyberspace equivalent of an international repertory company, which he called The Hamnet Players[4]. From 1993-95 this group staged two performances each of three "cyber-plays"—Hamnet, PCBeth (on the premise that if Shakespeare knew there was a choice he'd never have used a Mac), and An IRC channel named #Desire.

These tentative steps into a new culture attracted attention. Hamnet was reviewed by the San Diego Union and the Los Angeles Times Calendar section as though it was real theatre. The Hamnet Players became the subject of journal articles[5][6] and graduate theses[7][8]. In her book Cyberpl@y, psychology professor Brenda Danet wrote "Hamnet activities are of theoretical importance because this group was one of the first to challenge the conventional dichotomy between the "live" and the "mediated."[9] She also wrote "Participants felt that something important was happening. A strong "sense of occasion" or of "collaborative expectancy" permeated the event. People made many comments revealing their excitement. One person declared, "We are making cyber-history"[10]" In her graduate thesis, Mary Anglin wrote "the Hamnet Players are the acknowledged thespians of the IRC universe"[11]. The search string "hamnet players" scores 14,100 hits on Google in 2012.

On 9 June 1996 Harris staged a world-wide social event, connected by IRC, which he called a synchro-meal[12]. Families in USA, Scotland, Holland, Canada, Israel, Austria and Norway prepared exactly the same meal at the same time and socialised on an IRC channel. The event was professionally videotaped and became a major component of an edition of the PBS series Life on the Internet [13]. The narration described the event as "an historic occasion. The world's first IRC dinner party." In the same program, MIT professor of social studies Sherry Turkle said "The internet is growing up to be cultures and sub-cultures, and villages, and different kinds of bars and bistros and coffee-shops..." Among those physically present at Harris's party were the well-known computer book authors Andy Rathbone and Tina Rathbone.

Stuart Harris was the star guest for the 7 June 2000 production Lifegame, staged at the La Jolla Playhouse by the Improbable theatre Company[14]. Parts of his life story were sardonically acted out in improv by members of the company.

Harris is a "trusty" Wikipedia editor (reviewer and rollbacker,) with over 2500 edits to 700 unique pages as of February 2013.

Published works

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  • Harris, Stuart (June 1983). Simon Campbell-Jones (ed.). "Horizon" at the Edge of the Universe (Chapter: Zero-g). BBC Books. p. 216. ISBN 978-0563179542.
  • Harris, Stuart (1994), "Much Ado About IRC", Online Access Magazine, 9: 28–32

Selected television documentaries[15]

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  • Stuart Harris, Producer
    Mick Jackson, Producer
    (Horizon 11 March 1974, Nova 19 May 1974). Fusion, The Energy Promise (60 min.)
     (Broadcast TV). London and Boston: BBC-2 and WGBH.     {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Stuart Harris, Producer
    Carl Sagan, Presenter
    James Burke, Presenter
    Karl Sabbagh, Executive Producer
    (20 July 1976). Is Anybody There? (90 min.) (Broadcast TV). London: BBC-1.
  • Stuart Harris, Producer
    John Lynch, Director
    (Horizon 15 December 1980, Nova 10 February 1981). Anatomy of a Volcano (Mt. St. Helens, 60 min.)
     (Broadcast TV). London and Boston: BBC-2 and WGBH.     {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Stuart Harris, Producer
    (Horizon 3 October 1983, Nova 18 October 1983). The Artificial Heart (60 min.)
     (Broadcast TV). London and Boston: BBC-2 and WGBH.     {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Sources

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  • Danet, Brenda (2001). Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online. Oxford: Berg. p. 418. ISBN 1-85973-424-3.
  • Pizzo, Antonio (2003), Teatro e mondo digitale (in Italian), pp. 112–113

Footnotes

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  1. ^ Royal Court Theatre cast list, January 1962
  2. ^ Harris's personal memoir of covering spaceflight
  3. ^ Harris 1995(2)
  4. ^ Archive of The Hamnet Players
  5. ^ Danet 1995
  6. ^ Pizzo 2003
  7. ^ Anglin 1998
  8. ^ Stefanini 1996
  9. ^ Danet 2001:109
  10. ^ Danet 1995
  11. ^ Anglin, p.12
  12. ^ Web page of the 1996 synchro-meal
  13. ^ Life on the Internet episode on the synchro-meal
  14. ^ Lifegame synopsis
  15. ^ Partial filmography from the British Film Institute

See also

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Stuart Harris at the IMDB
How we survived the 90s (personal memoir)


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