Chip Morningstar

Last updated

Chip Morningstar
Born
United States
Education University of Michigan
Occupation(s)Author, academic, developer of software systems
Years active1976 [1] –present
Engineering career
Employer(s)Agoric
PayPal
Yahoo!
Autodesk
Lucasfilm
Projects Habitat, American Information Exchange
Significant design JSON, E (programming language)
Awards First Penguin Award
Website www.fudco.com/chip/

Chip Morningstar is an American software architect, mainly for online entertainment and communication.

Contents

Morningstar held many jobs throughout his career in the research and development of technology and programs. Most notably was Morningstar's role as project leader for Lucasfilm's Habitat , the first large-scale virtual multiuser environment. [2] In March 2001, Morningstar and colleague Randy Farmer were awarded the inaugural "First Penguin Award" by the International Game Developers Association for their work on Habitat. He also participated in Project Xanadu, for which the word hypertext was first coined. Additionally, he is credited with coining the term avatar [3] [4] and pre-Internet work in online information marketplaces. [2]

Early life and education

Morningstar graduated from University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering [5] in 1981[ citation needed ]. While at the University of Michigan he performed research in the Space Physics Research Laboratory, where he wrote device drivers and CAD software for electronic circuitry. [6] [ better source needed ][ non-primary source needed ]

Chip Morningstar started his career as a research assistant at the University of Michigan and as an independent computer consultant. His original major was Aerospace at the University of Michigan. After his summer job in 1977 where he was surrounded by up to date computer technology, he changed his major to computer engineering. [7] In 1979, he took a job at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM) as a research engineer. While at ERIM he developed image processing software, languages and tools for the Cytocomputer. Morningstar also co-invented the Leonard-Morningstar image filter algorithm. [6]

Career

Morningstar worked with Mark S. Miller on Project Xanadu, [5] [8] the first distributed hypertext system (founded in 1960). Later, from 1984 [9] to 1992, he worked at Lucasfilm, Ltd. as a designer and programmer, as well as cyberspace consultant.[ citation needed ] While at Lucasfilm, Morningstar held the position of Project Leader for Habitat , an early graphical online multiplayer environment, released in 1986. [2] [10] Morningstar oversaw all development staff, as well as writing substantial portions of the server system himself. [6] [ better source needed ][ non-primary source needed ] Use of the term "avatar" for a human being's representative in a game world originated in Habitat, [11] the term referring to a deity's Earthly incarnation in Hindu belief.[ citation needed ] Morningstar also worked on the SCUMM game engine, used in Maniac Mansion (1987) [12] [13] and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988). [14]

Presenting at the Second International Conference on Cyberspace in 1991, Morningstar and Randy Farmer found themselves bemused by the seemingly impenetrable postmodern "lit crit" of some academic speakers. [15] [16] They revised their paper, "Cyberspace Colonies", [17] to feature a parody of this phraseology, and presented it on the second day of the conference. Morningstar subsequently published an essay on the topic, "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything". [16] After the conference, he analyzed the leading names in postmodern literary theory and philosophy of the era to determine if there was anything of value hidden behind the dense verbiage, if the underlying concepts were "bogus", or if there was actually no intellectual content at all. Morningstar ultimately determined "there is indeed some content, much of it interesting", but he also wrote: "The language and idea space of the field have become so convoluted that they have confused even themselves." "My Postmodern Adventure" has been described as "a wonderful cutting-through of academic weed to find the ideas that flower at the center of post-modernism". [18]

Morningstar was chief architect at American Information Exchange Corporation, [2] and worked at Electric Communities [19] (with Randy Farmer and Douglas Crockford), [20] which acquired The Palace , [9] the world's largest graphical chat system at the time[ citation needed ]. They also developed the E programming language.

Morningstar then worked at State Software, where he helped create the JSON format with Crockford in 2001. [21] From 2003 to 2005, he worked at Avistar Communications as principal architect for a videoconferencing system. [6] [ non-primary source needed ] In 2005, he joined Yahoo!, where he was the principal architect and development team leader for the Yahoo! Core Identity Platform (CoreID). CoreID is a system that provides a framework for the storage and retrieval for all users of Yahoo!. [6] [ non-primary source needed ] He was also a team leader of the Yahoo! Reputation Platform, [22] as well as a member of Yahoo!'s Social Media advisory program. [6] [ non-primary source needed ]

After Yahoo!, Morningstar and Farmer ran a consulting firm [23] from 2009 to 2011. [6] [ non-primary source needed ] From 2012 [6] [ non-primary source needed ] to 2016, [24] he worked as an architect at PayPal and served as the company's representative to the Ecma TC39 committee, the international JavaScript standards body. [25] In January 2020, he joined Agoric.[ citation needed ]

Honors and recognitions

In March 2001, Morningstar and his colleague Randy Farmer were awarded the First Penguin Award by the International Game Developers Association for their work on Lucasfilm's Habitat . [26] [27] This game contributed to the evolution of what is now known as massively multiplayer games.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberspace</span> Concept describing a widespread, interconnected digital technology

Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday reality. In cyberspace people can hide behind fake identities, as in the famous The New Yorker cartoon." The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, governments, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, and digital communication were all growing dramatically; the term cyberspace was able to represent the many new ideas and phenomena that were emerging.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucasfilm Games</span> American video game producer

Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.

<i>Maniac Mansion</i> 1987 video game

Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure video game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It follows teenage protagonist Dave Miller as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend Sandy Pantz from a mad scientist, whose mind has been enslaved by a sentient meteor. The player uses a point-and-click interface to guide Dave and two of his six playable friends through the scientist's mansion while solving puzzles and avoiding dangers. Gameplay is non-linear, and the game must be completed in different ways based on the player's choice of characters. Initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, Maniac Mansion was Lucasfilm Games' first self-published product.

A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game.

<i>Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders</i> 1988 video game

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a 1988 graphic adventure game by Lucasfilm Games. It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after Maniac Mansion. The project was led by David Fox, with Matthew Alan Kane as the co-designer and co-programmer.

Project Xanadu was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it superior to the World Wide Web, with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents."

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual world</span> Large-scale, interactive computer-simulated environment

A virtual world is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities and communicate with others. These avatars can be textual, graphical representations, or live video avatars with auditory and touch sensations. Virtual worlds are closely related to mirror worlds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avatar (computing)</span> Graphical representation of the user or the users alter ego or character

In computing, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user or the user's character or persona. Avatars can be two-dimensional icons in Internet forums and other online communities, where they are also known as profile pictures, userpics, or formerly picons. Alternatively, an avatar can take the form of a three-dimensional model, as used in online worlds and video games.

<i>Habitat</i> (video game) 1986 video game by LucasArts

Habitat is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by LucasArts. It is the first attempt at a large-scale commercial virtual community that was graphic based. Initially created in 1985 by Randy Farmer, Chip Morningstar, Aric Wilmunder and Janet Hunter the game was made available as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64 computer and the corporate progenitor to AOL. Both Farmer and Morningstar were given a First Penguin Award at the 2001 Game Developers Choice Awards for their innovative work on Habitat. As a graphical MUD it is considered a forerunner of modern MMORPGs unlike other online communities of the time. Habitat had a GUI and large user base of consumer-oriented users, and those elements in particular have made Habitat a much-cited project and acknowledged benchmark for the design of today's online communities that incorporate accelerated 3D computer graphics and immersive elements into their environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Palace (computer program)</span>

The Palace is a computer program to access graphical chat room servers, called palaces, in which users may interact with one another using graphical avatars overlaid on a graphical backdrop. The software concept was originally created by Jim Bumgardner and produced by Time Warner in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995.

"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences.

Virtual crime or in-game crime refers to a virtual criminal act that takes place in a massively multiplayer online game, or within the broader metaverse. The huge time and effort invested into such games can lead online "crime" to spill over into real world crime, and even blur the distinctions between the two. Some countries have introduced special police investigation units to cover such "virtual crimes". South Korea is one such country and looked into 22,000 cases in the first six months of 2003.

Roger Everett Gregory is a US computer programmer, technologist, and scientist. Gregory's work in project Xanadu made him one of the earliest pioneers of hypertext technology, which helped lay the foundations for the hyperlink technology that underlies the World Wide Web. Gregory attended the University of Michigan as a mathematics major. In the 1970s, he founded the Ann Arbor Computer Club, similar to the West Coast's Home Brew Computer Club.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randy Farmer</span> American video game designer

Frank Randall "Randy" Farmer is an American game developer, co-creator with Chip Morningstar of one of the first graphical online games, 1985's Habitat. In 2001 he and Morningstar were the first recipients of the Pioneer Award by the International Game Developers Association. Farmer was involved with the creation of Yahoo! 360 and Communities.com, and has published several works on web and game development, social media, and online communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Crockford</span> American computer programmer

Douglas Crockford is an American computer programmer who is involved in the development of the JavaScript language. He specified the data format JSON, and has developed various JavaScript related tools such as the static code analyzer JSLint and minifier JSMin. Of his books, "JavaScript: The Good Parts" was published in 2008, followed by "How JavaScript Works" in 2018. He was a senior JavaScript architect at PayPal until 2019, and is also a writer and speaker on JavaScript, JSON, and related web technologies.

The American Information Exchange (AMIX) was a platform for the buying and selling of information, goods and services as well as the exchange of information, ideas, and certain kinds of intellectual work product, created by economist and futurist Phil Salin in the 1980s, together with Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, and involvement from Esther Dyson and Mitch Kapor. Economist Bill Tulloh was market manager.

Worlds.com, or Worlds Chat, is an online chat program introduced in April 1995 by the company Worlds Inc. Worlds.com was the first program Worlds Inc. made available to the general public, and it was free of charge to download from their website. The popularity of the program, in addition to prior successful developments associated with Worlds Inc. such as Tamiko Thiel's work with Steven Spielberg to create Starbright World, allowed the company to procure a minority investment of $5.6 million from Pearson PLC in June 1995.

Gary Winnick is an American computer game designer, writer, artist, and animator who was the first artist hired by Lucasfilm Games. He co-designed Maniac Mansion, alongside Ron Gilbert, and created the comic book Bad Dreams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VTuber</span> Streamers that use digital avatars

A VTuber, or virtual YouTuber, is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics. Real-time motion capture software or technology are often—but not always—used to capture movement. The digital trend originated in Japan in the mid-2010s, and has become an international online phenomenon in the early 2020s. A majority of VTubers are English and Japanese-speaking YouTubers or live streamers who use avatar designs. By 2020, there were more than 10,000 active VTubers. Although the term is an allusion to the video platform YouTube, they also use websites such as Niconico, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and Bilibili.

References

  1. ↑ Handy, Alex (November 14, 2016). "The future of software security". SD Times. After 40 years developing software
  2. 1 2 3 4 Epstein, Jim (October 7, 2020). "Before the Web: The 1980s Dream of a Free and Borderless Virtual World". Reason .
  3. ↑ Seibel, Peter (December 21, 2009). Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming. ISBN   9781430219491 – via Google Books. Chip Morningstar started [Habitat]. He invented the avatar; he invented the graphical virtual world – Douglas Crockford
  4. ↑ Hale, Constance (1996). "Wired style : principles of English usage in the digital age". San Francisco, Calif. : HardWired : Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West.
  5. 1 2 Ivory, James D. (2012). Virtual Lives: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. p. 140. ISBN   9781598845853.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Morningstar, Chip. "Resume" . Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  7. ↑ Wallis, Alistair (October 12, 2006). "Playing Catch Up: Habitat's Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer". Gamastura. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  8. ↑ Milburn, Colin (April 24, 2015). "Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter". Duke University Press. Chip Morningstar had known K. Eric Drexler [...] They had worked on the Xanadu Project along with [...] Mark S. Miller
  9. 1 2 Kimen, Shel (December 1998). "Maximum PC, Dec 1998". Future US, Inc. p. 53.
  10. ↑ "The Game Archeologist Moves Into Lucasfilm's Habitat". Joystiq. January 10, 2012. Archived from the original on August 10, 2013. Retrieved July 9, 2013.
  11. ↑ Kan, Michael. "What is an Avatar? Creators Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer Trace the Ancient Roots of the Latest Buzzword" . Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  12. ↑ Hatfield, Daemon (April 26, 2007). "Interview: SCUMM of the Earth". IGN . Ziff Davis. p. 1. Archived from the original on October 9, 2015. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
  13. ↑ "MOCAGH.ORG: Lucasfilm and Lucasarts: maniac manual". Internet Archive . Lucasfilm. 1987.
  14. ↑ "ZAK MCKRACKEN". Internet Archive . Lucasfilm. 1988.
  15. ↑ Farmer, Randy (May 10, 1991). "The Second International Conference on Cyberspace: Literary Criticism Collides With Software Engineering" (PDF). p. 3. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  16. 1 2 Morningstar, Chip. "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything" . Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  17. ↑ Jacobson, Robert (April 28, 1991). "Report on Cyberspace Conference 2, Santa Cruz, CA, Apr 91". Newsgroup:  sci.virtual-worlds . Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  18. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 613. ISBN   0-131-01816-7.
  19. ↑ "Making Java A Secure Programming Language". web.stanford.edu. February 19, 1997.
  20. ↑ LLC, SPIN Media (October 1994). "Chip+Morningstar"+crockford&pg=PA88 "SPIN". SPIN Media LLC.
  21. ↑ Crockford, Douglas (October 18, 2018). How JavaScript Works. Virgule-Solidus. p. 20-24. ISBN   9781949815023.
  22. ↑ Farmer, Randy; Glass, Bryce (March 4, 2010). "Chip+Morningstar"+yahoo&pg=PR16 Building Web Reputation Systems. O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 16. ISBN   9781449388690.
  23. ↑ Schiemann, Dylan (August 23, 2010). "[Foundation][VOTE] Accept the Open Reputation Framework as a Dojo Foundation sponsored project?".
  24. ↑ Handy, Alex (January 25, 2016). "SD Times Blog: Macross 6502 on GitHub". SD Times. Today, he works as the architect at PayPal
  25. ↑ "Minute of the 46th meeting of Ecma TC39" (PDF). Santa Clara, CA, USA: TC39 committee. May 27–29, 2015. p. 1.
  26. ↑ Smith, Rob (2008). "Rogue Leaders – The Story Of Lucasarts". p. 24.
  27. ↑ "First Penguin Archive". Game Developers Choice Awards. Retrieved March 3, 2021.
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