Peter J. Scott's resume reads like a Monty Python punchline: half business coach, half information technology specialist, half teacher, three-quarters daddy. After receiving a master's degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University, he has worked for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an employee and contractor for over thirty years, helping advance our exploration of the Solar System. He started in the Navigation section, which maneuvers spacecraft to hit tiny targets a billion miles away, then moved to IT infrastructure, providing solutions for enterprise architecture in distributed computing and institutional cybersecurity.
Over the years, he branched out into the Open Source community, writing technical books and videos, and delivering convention speeches and onsite trainings. Yet at the same time, he developed a parallel career in "soft" fields of human development, getting certifications in Neuro-Linguistic Programming from founder John Grinder and in coaching from the International Coaching Federation. In 2007, he co-created a convention honoring the centennial of the birth of author Robert Heinlein, attended by over 700 science fiction fans and aerospace experts, a unique fusion of the visionary with the concrete. Bridging these disparate worlds positions him to envisage a delicate solution to the existential threats facing humanity.
His new book, “Crisis of Control: How Artificial SuperIntelligences May Destroy or Save the Human Race” explores these threats. It offers us a fascinating look at advancing technology and how we will either be greatly helped or gravely harmed by it depending on how we act now.
Scott lives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada with his wife and two daughters, writing the Human Cusp blog on dealing with exponential change.
