Nathaniel (nsb) Borenstein | My email address | ||
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I'm a scientist/programmer/inventor/entrepreneur/author/activist who has been involved
in Internet-related innovations since 1980, specializing in
e-mail technology, human-computer interaction, and electronic
commerce. Journalists have called me an "Internet Guru" and "a
geek's geek," among other things.
I like to help build consensus in diverse groups, and to facilitate
communication across different perspectives, such as software development and business strategy.
I have also been preoccupied since childhood with trying to understand the religions of the world. My forthcoming book explores how information technology affects the human spiritual quest. Stay tuned! I am currently serving on the faculty of the School of Information at the University of Michigan. I live in remote northern Michigan. |
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MIME and My Standards WorkI've also worked on other aspects of email standards, and on standards for calendaring, document formats, instant messaging, and a few other things. Nowadays I'm not active in standards work but still potentially interested, particularly in standardizing dynamic messaging. |
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My entrepreneurial ventures(But NOT Mimecast, however. I didn't join Mimecast until it was several years old.) |
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My software projectsI wrote a lot of software in the 80's and 90's, notably metamail, Safe-Tcl, and the Andrew Message System), which have been used by millions.At left is a late 80's overview of the Andrew Message System. |
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My WritingsI've written three books, numerous journal articles and 16 Internet RFC documents. I also blog occasionally. A Spy In the House of War: My Life as a NATO Collaborator , my 1989 essay that won the NYU Olive Branch award for writing about peace | |
My 29 patents |
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My Life in Large OrganizationsFor 8 years I was a Distinguished Engineer for IBM, where I ran the research and standards programs for the Lotus division. |
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My Volunteer Work |
Immodestly, I think some of the coolest things I've done are less well known. A few of my sins of pride: Things I Hope to Be Known For Some Day
In 1992, I applied for a patent on what is now known as "dynamic email". Bellcore, my employer, decided not to pursue the application because it was deemed to be of little commercial potential, and thus not worth the bother to differentiate from two pieces of prior art (John Vittal and John Hogg). That was a smart commercial decision, because the patent would have expired in 2012, six years before Google launched AMP for Email, the first thing that could have seriously infringed on it. As of 2021, dynamic email is still sometimes seen as the "next big thing" in the email world, but I increasingly suspect it won't become common until made more necessary by speed of light delays in interplanetary communication. Amusingly, although Bellcore did not follow through on patenting the original invention, in 2024 I received US patent #12,001,544 on countermeasures to protect against malicious uses of dynamic messaging technology! In 2013, I applied for a patent on "Sharing Artifacts in Permission-Protected Archives." This time my employer, Mimecast, persisted, and US patent #11,163,898 was issued on November 2, 2021. This invention could allow organizations to be much more efficient by mining their email archives for redundancies and opportunities for internal collaboration. However, whoever actually tries to do this first will require significant resources and determination to work through all the legalities and the privacy details, so I rather doubt that I will live to see it happen. My forthcoming book on how the Internet affects the human spiritual journey. The most recent draft is titled "Digital Integrity: Living Humanely in an Artificial World" but that could still change. My amazing children and grandchildren.
More than You Need To KnowMy Meyers-Briggs type is very strongly ENFP:A ridiculous online site declared me the 19,008th most influential
human being of all time. I have battled depressive disorder and won! Please seek help if you need it! I've been collecting quotations for decades, sample one here (reload to sample another) | My Family
Like most of us, I too rarely reflect on how lucky I am in general, and in particular to have had so many remarkable people in my life. Here are a few of the ones I miss most.
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