Mark P. McCahill
Mark P. McCahill (Mark Perry McCahill) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | February 7, 1956 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Programmer/systems architect |
| Employers | |
| Known for | Inventing theGopherprotocol, the predecessor of theWorld Wide Web;developing and popularizing a number of otherInternettechnologies |
Mark Perry McCahill(born February 7, 1956) is an Americancomputer scientistandInternet pioneer.He has developed and popularized a number ofInternettechnologies since the late 1980s, including theGopherprotocol,Uniform Resource Locators(URLs), and POPmail.
Career
[edit]Mark McCahill received a BA in chemistry at theUniversity of Minnesotain 1979, spent one year doing analytical environmental chemistry, and then joined the University of Minnesota Computer Center as a programmer.[1]
Internet pioneer
[edit]In the late 1980s, McCahill led the team at the University of Minnesota that developed POPmail, one of the first popular Internet e-mail clients.[2]At about the same time as POPmail was being developed,Steve Dornerat theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaigndevelopedEudora,and the user interface conventions found in these early efforts are still used in modern-day e-mail clients.[3]
In 1991, McCahill led the originalGopherdevelopment team, which invented a simple way to navigate distributed information resources on the Internet.[4][5][6][7]Gopher's menu-basedhypermediacombined with full-textsearch enginespaved the way for the popularization of theWorld Wide Weband was thede factostandard for Internet information systems in the early to mid 1990s.[2]
Working with other pioneers such asTim Berners-Lee,Marc Andreessen,Alan EmtageandPeter J. Deutsch(creators ofArchie) andJon Postel,McCahill was involved in creating and codifying the standard forUniform Resource Locators(URLs).[8]
In the mid 90s, McCahill's team developedGopherVR,a 3D user interface for the Gopher protocol to explore how spatial metaphors could be used to organize information and create social spaces.[9]
He is said to have coined or popularized the phrase "surfing the Internet".[1]However, prior to McCahill's first use of the phrase in February, 1992, the analogy was used in a comic Book,The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERF Boy,published in October, 1991 by one of the early Internet Service Providers, CERFnet.[10]
Later work
[edit]In April 2007, McCahill left theUniversity of Minnesotato join the Office of Information Technology atDuke Universityas an architect of 3-D learning and collaborative systems.[1]A major focus of his later work has beenvirtual worlds,and he was one of six principal architects of theCroquet Project.[11]
Virtual worlds
[edit]In February 2010, Mark McCahill was revealed by the philosopherPeter Ludlow(also known by the pseudonym Urizenus Sklar) to be the Internet persona Pixeleen Mistral, a noted "tabloid reporter" coveringvirtual worldswho was the editor of Ludlow's newspaperThe Alphaville Herald.[12]In a 2016 interview withLeo Laporte,McCahill said that his involvement with developing theCroquet Projecthad led him into contact withSecond Lifeand that he had become interested in thesociologyof virtual worlds. As Pixeleen Mistral, he was a prominent reporter on Second Life, and a celebrity inside the game, although his real identity was not known by anyone for many years.[13]
References
[edit]- ^abc"University Of Minnesota / Internet pioneer making move to Duke faculty".Twin Cities.2007-04-01.Retrieved2019-03-15.
- ^abGihring, Tim."The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol".minnpost.com.Retrieved12 August2016.
- ^"For Inventor of Eudora, Great Fame, No Fortune".archive.nytimes.com.Retrieved2019-03-14.
- ^"Internet Pioneers – Lost in Cyberspace".The Economist.1999-12-16.
- ^"How Gopher Nearly Won the Internet".The Chronicle of Higher Education.2016-09-05.
- ^"The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol".2016-08-11.
- ^"The Gopher Project: Early Internet and U of M Libraries | Minitex News".news.minitex.umn.edu.Retrieved2019-03-14.
- ^"Oral History Interview with Mark P. McCahill".Charles Babbage Institute.2001-09-13.
- ^Chen, Chaomei (2013).Information Visualisation and Virtual Environments.Springer Science & Business Media. p. 187.ISBN978-1-4471-3622-4.
- ^The Adventures of Captain Internet And CERF Boy.1991.
- ^"Mark McCahill, Collaborative Systems Architect".Retrieved14 September2021.
- ^"Pixeleen Mistral Files Legal Response to Venkman's DMCA Abuses".The Alphaville Herald. February 6, 2010.
- ^"Mark McCahill".Triangulation.Episode 264.Archivedfrom the original on 2021-12-21.
External links
[edit]
- "Oral History Interview with Mark P. McCahill".Charles Babbage Institute,University of Minnesota. September 13, 2001.