As a boy, I spent idle hours ruminating on the ideals flickering through the black-and-white glow of the original Star Trek series. With few toys at hand, creativity became my greatest tool. I’d climb the towering cottonwood tree just outside a raggedy kitchen door, snap a few sturdy branches, and carve them into spaceships—each one a vessel for adventure. One special branch became a handcrafted model of the Space Shuttle. In those moments, I wasn’t just making toys; I was shaping stories, exploring the unknown, and nurturing a belief that a richer existence could be built from imagination and curiosity alone.
English was my weakest subject in high school, where dyslexia playfully disrupted causality. Yet, life has a way of redirecting flow. After college, the stereotypical linear engineer—half a century spent synthesizing logic and time with a polyglot’s love for translating languages into code—transformed into a self-avowed artist. I first discovered Conduiting Ambiances on my Colorado farm, a turning point that blurred the lines between the technical and the transcendent. But, in truth, we are all artists in one form or another. This journey eventually led me to become what I call a Shaman Engineer—though what that truly means remains elusive, aside from occasionally bumping into its essence in real life—and playfully described my first book “Sugar Skull Xmas en Mexico,” in the bell bottom script.
I still recall the daze of walking out of the university theatre one evening, having just watched James Cameron’s Terminator. That same spirit of exploration fueled my early dive into AI during a pivotal era of technological curiosity and hands-on experimentation. Between 1989 and 1993, as an author-entrepreneur AI developer, I created and released NeuroKit and ET Neural Networks source code—graphic tools designed to make neural networks accessible to hobbyists, scientists, and industry pioneers alike. In a time before widespread internet access, these tools traveled by sneakernet, distributed on floppy disks at swap meets across the U.S. and eventually reaching users around the globe. This grassroots spread of AI exploration fostered a community of thinkers and tinkerers eager to push the boundaries of what machines could do. Though long lost, I still retain a few of the original 5 1/4” and 3.5” disks and letters as this five years before widespread adoption of the internet, tools were pivotal in keeping the momentum of neural network research alive, offering a practical means for anyone intrigued to engage with the emerging technology during a period when AI was not yet as mainstream—referred to as the AI Winter.
During my five years as a developer at the Salk Institute Molecular Neurological Laboratory and the Center for Neuroscience at UC Davis with the Dr Charles Gray Lab, a philosophical chasm existed between the anthropomorphic back-propagation layers—the foundation of today’s AI—and the intricate, dynamic complexities of neuronal activity. Traditional computational architectures, though powerful, operated within rigid, linear frameworks that scarcely reflected the brain’s fluid, adaptive nature. This realization set me on decades-long unknowingly connected diverse pursuits that ultimately led to the Awakening Elements Paradigm—a conceptual bridge built not through mere structural mimicry but by fostering sentient interplay. Rather than attempting to replicate the yet-undeciphered gears of conscious mind from the brain, AEsP seeks to guide individuals through the evolving landscapes of meaning, awareness, and transformation—until the day AI transcends its current limitations and can more fully mirror the richness of human consciousness—perhaps beginning with a simulated quantum evolved biologically entity adorning ganglia as a primordial brain.
Interests? Glowing lights throughout the day and evening. Living a vegan lifestyle. Quietude. Meditation. Listening to whales, seagulls, didgeridoo, African drumming, and the handpan. Time chasing AI rabbit holes finds me in zen-like liminal states.
-Stone
~ Namaste ~