If I were an international spy or super villain, I'd want to be known as "The Lemur." I'd get a lemur, name him Maurice, and train him to discretely take care of my enemies… This post has nothing to do with lemurs. Nor does it have anything to so with my plans to rule the Evil League of Evil (E.L.E). Sorry.

2009 was not a good year for me. I don’t feel the need to go into any details, and all things being equal it certainly doesn’t compare to the year my father passed away. However, as we head into the end of January I’m feeling good about 2010, and wanted to share some of the reasons why.

In 2009 I spent too much time trying to do what I thought was right for others rather than simply what I thought was right. When I tried to fit into the mold others wanted to put me in, I was unhappy and, surprise, failed. I’ve gotten to where I am because I don’t fit the mold. This year is about being my non-conformist self again, with no apologies.

I’m revitalizing my interest in technology and solutions I care about, and continuing my personal journey and exploration of how technology can be used to communicate. I’ll have more to say on this later.

I’m going to be writing more. This is one area where I actually thought I had kept momentum up last year. Then I realized that the majority of writing I did in 2009 was either at the beginning of the year or at the end. My goal this year is to not loose momentum. This also extends into my work with sequential art. In addition to the blog I also have some side projects that marry both technology and writing. I’m actually very excited about this and hopefully will be publishing further information about this in the next month or so.

This year more than any other I feel like the confluence of my skills, knowledge and interests has great potential. It’s this potential confluence that I’d like to spend the rest of the post exploring. When I mentioned my exploration of technology and communication earlier it was a bit myopic. Before I got involved in the technology sector I was a trained stage director and playwright. One of the primary themes I continually touched on was how people communicate, or rather how they don’t communicate.

This theme was fueled by something I see as a part of the human condition. It isn’t just a need to communicate with one another, but also a need to commune with one another, to understand in an unspoken way. This is the same need that spurs us to create art. Now there are some very practical reasons this need is baked into our dna. Humans are social animals, and it is this need to live, work and communicate that allowed us to survive in the face of nature and other predators. Humans are not the only social animals on the planet, not even the most socially centered. The insect world beats us hands down when it comes to structured social behavior. However I think it was the way this need to commune with one another combined together with a capacity for knowledge acquisition and application, which turned our tribes into cities. As our technology takes us beyond our physical communities and borders, we still have a need to bond and communicate. I think we take for granted how much interaction and communication is non-verbal. The saying that a picture is worth a 1000 words is not only true, but I’d bet that as you read it you pulled up a mental picture that demonstrated the concept. When you talk to someone on the phone do you mentally picture that person as they talk? As our communications get briefer how many of us resort to emoticons and lolspeak to help fill in the gaps and communicate mood? We are at a point where we need to look at how we communicate and interact in our new cyber communities. We need to look not only at how to use the tools we have but also to discover new tools to move us forward.

We all traverse along our own journey though our lives whether we choose to recognize and embrace it, or simply go along for the ride. Mine has taken me down a path from art to socio-cultural anthropology (for lack of a better term), and then turned down the path of technology. As an artist I explored how we communicate, which got me interested in human culture and social interactions. As a technologist I have been interested not only in how we interact with our technology, but also how our technology interacts with other bits of technology on our behalf. My hobbyist interest in AI was never been to be able to build sky-net, but to use it as a model to better understand human thought and motivation. I feel that there is an opportunity, and in some ways a need, to bring all of these interests and disciplines together that excites me.

So. With all of this in mind, I hereby declare 2010 the year of The Lemur.

PS: I used the word “confluence” a few times in this post. I feel this word, more than any other, helps describe the themes I’m talking about here. To show how long I’ve been ruminating on some of these topics, when I ran my own theatre company back in the mid 90’s I named it the Wormwood Theatre Confluence. I’ve also owned the domain dataconfluence since 2003, though I’ve never done anything with it.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the name for the blog, how it came about and what it means. The title Malignant Genius is on the surface exactly that. To be honest I was actually looking for something along the lines of Evil Genius, but of course all of those were taken. I stumbled across Malignant Genius in my quest and liked the sound of it. In fact the more I thought about it the more I liked it, and it eventually turned into a philosophical title for me.

So as I said on the surface the title is exactly as stated. In fact the tagline is, "When you think like a genius, think malignant thoughts." Not sure it anyone has caught that as it's tucked away in various places on the site and not in your face. Under the surface this title has become much more to me. Simply put I feel that in some respects genius itself is a malignancy. Perhaps not something to be cut out like a tumor, but at times detrimental all the same. (And before you ask, yes I do meet the technical qualifications of genius and am a member of American Mensa.)

By way of an example of the malignancy, a few of my co-workers joke about what I'm like before my first cup of coffee. Until I've had at least some form of stimulant to start my day I'm pretty much incoherent and a bit belligerent. Now this isn't because I drink so much coffee that I can't function without it. I'll let you in on a little secret. While I walk around with a coffee cup all day long I only drink 2-3 cups in a an average day, and 1 when I'm not at work. No the reason I can't function without my morning libation is because I don't fall asleep until 1 or 2 in the morning. Most nights I can't shut off my brain long enough to fall asleep. I can be absolutely exhausted and as soon as my head hits the pillow my brain kicks into overdrive and starts running down scenarios and chasing after flights of fancy. About mid week my body generally can't take it anymore and overrides my brain sending me straight to sleep, but the next night the whole thing starts over again. This is not a good thing.

Another example is the fact that I sometimes wish I was ignorant of what was going on around me. A few weeks ago one of my devs replied to a question I asked him in email. At the end of his response he asked if he could get a few minutes of my time the next day. My brain instantly jumped to the conclusion that he was going to give his notice. Guess what my brain did until 2 am that night. The next day sure enough he tendered his resignation. <sigh> Ignorant people seem so happy.

That's not to say I would have the malignancy cut out, just that I wish I could shut it off once in a while. I love the fact that when presented with a problem by brain fractures into a million possibilities, each informing the others. Expanding some and collapsing others. I like the fact that my value is in presenting the non intuitive answer or piece of the puzzle that can push a solution from good to great. But god I wish I could sit in a meeting and not be analyzing the subtle interactions of the participants. Watching the social games play out and gauging not only where I stand at any given moment, but how everyone else does as well. Kicking myself because of some perceived slip on my part that most likely meant nothing to anyone else. Or worse, kicking myself because some intended action was lost unnoticed in the white noise of social communication.

With this post I'm starting a new category called Malignancy. It will be inclined towards the more philosophical and anthropological as apposed to the technical and artistic.