Rusty Cashman

I am a software engineer who has worked on embedded system software and on data communication protocols, on devices such as cable modems, VoIP systems, and wireless comunication devices. I played a role in the early development of both the CDPD and DOCSIS systems, and I am currently working in the areas of Ultra-wideband and IEEE 802.15. For more information see my linkedIn profile.

Although my professional expertise is in SW engineering I rarely edit those articles. Instead I do most of my editing on articles related to the history of science and evolutionary biology which are long standing interests of mine.

• I believe it was no accident that the greatest literary project of the enlightenment was an encyclopedia.

• I believe that Wikipedia represents a major step towards Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica, a nearly comprehensive summary and distillation of human knowledge.

• I also believe that Wikipedia is one of the best practical realizations of Ted Nelson's hypertext concept even though he probably hates it. Whenever I use Wikipedia as a reference I never stop with the article I started with, so I believe that cross linking between articles is incredibly important and I try to spend time adding cross links wherever I find them missing.

• I believe that Wikipedia should be as easy to use as possible so I also spend time adding redirects.

• I believe that many otherwise reasonably good articles on scientific topics don't have enough historical context.

• I believe that biographical articles should always tell you why the subject was important enough to merit an article. In particular I think that means that a biographical article on a scientist should always include some discussion of the subject's work and how it fit into the historical development of whatever scientific field that person contributed to, not just a laundry list of career achievements.