Electronic Gift Economies, Inc.: About

From early childhood until the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was passed, John enjoyed his freedom to take things apart, alter them, reassemble them—discounting one occasion when the number of gears that popped out of a Talking View-Master caught him off guard—and otherwise use them in some way not intended by their inventor. He started to create computer programs at age twelve, before having access to a computer, by writing small routines on paper and imagining how they would run. Having come to the (perhaps mistaken) conclusion that writing software was too easy and not worth the cost of tuition, his college years would result in an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering rather than a computer science degree. After college he was back to software, notably writing Vib-Ribbon, a copy-protected, region-encoded, patented, but otherwise wonderful game produced by Masaya Matsuura for a popular home console. He joins Electronic Gift Economies, Inc. to help make a world where creations like Vib-Ribbon would be produced as nonproprietary works.

Anthony Carrico started thinking about the cultural, rather than merely technical, impact of his work after reading an IEEE (1990 Spectrum?) article about Richard Stallman's pioneering work on Free Software. Along with many people in the community, Carrico recognized that the real promise of digital technology—humanity building and sharing a body of cultural works together—could be achieved if producers made their works nonproprietary, and consumers made donations to those works. In 2001, with many producers already contributing to a growing body of nonproprietary works, he proposed the giftfile system to close the economic loop.

Carrico picked up the "Learning By Doing" attitude as a 4Her growing up in Saratoga County, New York. He enjoyed an engineering education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in January 1992, and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in January 1994. His recent professional work includes audio and game programming. He maintains an active interest in computer languages.

Renee Carrico comes to the world of nonproprietary works from the behavioral sciences. Through her experiences as a researcher and educator, Renee came to understand science and teaching as cultural activities that only progress in an open, nonproprietary framework. Like many other researchers, Renee now believes that digital technology offers the possibility to create new publishing models which maximize the widespread and free distribution of scientific works.

Renee Carrico is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont. Renee received a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997. She completed her graduate studies in Developmental Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, receiving an M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2005).