Romel Rivera

I was born and grew up in Nicaragua, lived in Bournemouth, England and Monterrey, Mexico, and I now live in Minneapolis, MN, U.S.  As a principal investigator for my own corporation, I carried out research on automated software modernization for a number of U.S. agencies, including DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), NASA, NSF (The National Science Foundation), the Edwards Air Force Base, and the aerospace industry. I love my family, being a girl dad, and long runs by the sea at low tide.

 

During my research and development days in Computer Science, the challenge I set for my company was to be fully engaged in state-of-the-art research, but with the goal of creating commercial technology suitable for practical applications. In our relationship with the Edwards Air Force Base, for example, our goal was to automate the modernization of embedded avionics software systems—and to watch the F-16’s, modernized with our software, fly over the Mojave Desert, get smaller and smaller high up in the sky, until they were out of sight.​

 

So, having spent all of my student and professional life in computer science, the act of writing a book came as a surprise. One year ago, the thought of writing a book on any topic never occurred to me. But then I came across a trend in Barcelona, Spain, where physicians specialized in resuscitation would explain the experience recounted by those revived, with our limited knowledge of quantum physics, stretching science into unsubstantiated spiritual belief systems. I thought, “See?  After 5000 years of going to the well, catering to our addiction to creating certainty, we are doing it all over again.”

 

I decided to write a small, five-page article on the subject for a magazine. But the topic kept leaking at the seams, impossible to suture shut into a neat, insulated bundle. At some point, I realized that this could be a nice little booklet that I could distribute on a street corner at a local art fair. But the topic kept expanding until I realized that I was writing a book—backwards I might add, writing the last chapters first, as that is where my thoughts had led  me all along. The content morphed into far more significance than little quirky scientific extrapolations. Ten months later (of an extremely busy year), I was publishing my book.

 

I hope my book conveys that this was never an attempt to seek consensus or align with anything beyond my stream of consciousness. What I love about computer science is the exposure to creativity and designing by conceptualization, and I hope that my pleasure for conceptualization leaked through the seams and permeated this book.

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Romel Rivera,

March 5th, 2025