Tom Munnecke

Bio

Tom Munnecke is the founder of the Uplift Academy

Tom Munnecke was one of the software architects and visionaries behind the two largest hospital information systems in the world: the Veterans Administration’s VistA program (formerly called the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program), and the Department of Defense’s Composite Health Care System (CHCS). He took early retirement as vice president and chief scientist at Science Applications International Corporation to pursue philanthropic and humanitarian applications of science and technology. He became a fellow at Stanford’s Digital Visions Program, a Sr. Fellow at Civic Ventures, and founder of the Uplift Academy previously named GivingSpace.

He authored one of the first digital conferencing electronic mail systems for large enterprises (MailMan in 1982), proposed the use of web-based front ends to the medical record (1995, which became VA’s My Health eVet), called for a Personal Health Record (1998 in HealthSpace), special adaptation of health informatics for genomic and proteomic information (GENOS, 2002). He has explored the vision of Jonas Salk’s work in creating an “Epidemic of Health” (1995) as well as his Are we being good ancestors? (2007). He was interviewed as part of the Pew Foundation study of Internet Visionaries (2005).

Mr. Munnecke’s work is largely self-funded, and tends to focus on smaller workshops and conversations independent of formal organizations or affiliations. He has held workshops at the Santa Fe Institute with Murray Gell-Mann, Stanford University, United Nations Environmental Program in Paris, and elsewhere in the US. Not subject to the “publish or perish” dynamics of academia, the fundraising needs of the non-profit sector, or the need of profitability in the for-profit sector, he is able to explore innovative ideas without boundaries. Despite his disinterest in fundraising or publicity, his work has been supported by the Omidyar Network, Donor’s Trust, the Philanthropic Enterprise, and the Compton Foundation.

His current interests revolve around the notion of uplift – ways of discovering and amplifying patterns of activities that have the potential to make the world a better place. He is particularly interested in complexity theory, networks, linguistics, information theory, self-reference, and scale. He is also interested in “future binding” – ways of designing things today that anticipate an unknown future.

Mr. Munnecke is director of the Galactic Headquarters of the Cosmos Research Center, a children’s science club, and enjoys astronomy, photography, filmmaking, sailing, music (especially drumming and electronic composition), and travel.

Mr. Munnecke lives in north San Diego county with his wife; two daughters and a growing collection of grandchildren live nearby."

More Information

• on Toasters and Cats - interesting to think about in context of P2P.

Picture at http://flickr.com/photos/joi/519391584/

Listen or watch:

1. Tom Munnecke on Uplift Communities
2. Tom Munnecke on the Uplift Academy
3. Videos of Tom Munnecke's Workshop Presentations
4. Tom Munnecke's Blog