Chimp seated at computer on desk

Back in the day, as a program manager at Microsoft, I created the Windows Start Menu and Taskbar.

I was the last student of the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, who sent me to the Yerkes Regional Primate Center in Atlanta to try to teach two chimpanzees to talk. In the end, they taught me a lot more than I ever managed to teach them. And it sparked my interest in making things easier to use.

Over the years, I’ve worked on start-ups, written a few novels, encouraged people to vote, and contributed to health research.

The huge advances in AI over the last few years have rekindled my interest in software. As Jeff Bezos might say, it feels very much like Day 1.