User:William L. Benzon

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

My career has ranged from cognitive science, through art, music, and the web. In 2001 I published a book on music, Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture, which has recently been translated into Chinese and Japanese.

I am currently Associate Director at the World Development Endowment Foundation, where I am helping to plan and organize an effort to create a educational, cultural, and economic development resource center on Governors Island in New York City's harbor. Prior to this I was a Senior Scientist with MetaLogics, Inc., where I worked on knowledge representation and information design for web-based health services. In the past I have worked as a consultant and freelance writer and have taught on-line with Connected Education. I developed a web-based tribute to Martin Luther King that was recognized by Publisher’s Weekly and a tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk that was recognized in Esquire magazine. I have been a consultant to NASA, the U.S. Air Force, New York State, and private sector corporations.

I have taught in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and have published scholarly articles, reviews, and technical reports on African-American music, literary analysis and theory, cultural evolution, cognition and brain theory, visual thinking, and technical communication. In conjunction with Richard Friedhoff, I published a book on computer graphics and image-processing entitled Visualization: The Second Computer Revolution (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989).

As a jazz musician, I play trumpet and flugelhorn and have shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King, Frank Foster, Al Grey, and Nick Brignola. I am cofounder of the AfroEurasian Connection, a musical ensemble which has been supported by the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and I have exhibited computer art in the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island.