Hi Reader. This post answers the question, Who Am I? — not nearly as well as Victor Hugo did in Les Misérables, and without music or costumes. 

My answer takes the form of a lecture that I’m slated to give on 25 February 2023, at the Oak Park (Illinois) Public Library. You can choose to attend in person, or on Zoom, by tapping this link for the free registration page.

It’s often the case that lectures are given to people who don’t know what’s coming, or who want to think more about it after it came. Even more often, a lecture is missed by people for whom scheduling is inconvenient. And of course there are many who don’t care to sit still for a lecture that they’d rather scan as an article.

For all these people, I have posted the text of my lecture at this link. This is well before the scheduled date, so today’s readers of the “article” can decide if they want to become listeners and discussants at the end of this month. The article will stay up after that, making it easy for people to post their own ideas and questions that slowly come to mind.

Why bother with lecturing and posting? Is a discussion about George Moore so important that access must be as wide and easy as possible? No, that’s not the case. Nor is it the case that my lecture is about George Moore.

The lecture is actually about something larger, dare I say epic: leveraging advanced technology to increase engagement with literature and fine art of the past; what I call literary legacies. I know a little about Moore, and I know that most people care nothing for his legacy, so he makes an excellent use case.

The lecture — or article, if you prefer to read it — answers the question Who Am I for the simple reason that George Moore Interactive is me. I founded it, I’m the only one working on it. It’s not only a technical solution to a problem that folks like me have. It’s core to my raison d’être. 

George Moore Interactive is me, yet it isn’t all of me. It’s the part that Ralph Waldo Emerson labeled Man Thinking.

Assigning a visual identity to this Man Thinking seemed appropriate, hence my new logo. Eventually the logo will brand technology created by George Moore Interactive and stand for something beyond myself.