Steven Leonard Stovall

Born into a pioneer black Los Angeles family (my grandfather arrived here at the turn of the 20th century, and became the first black physician in Los Angeles), I took a degree in abstract mathematics from UCLA. Other than my formal training in logic and mathematics, I am largely an autodidact, having taught myself enough about music to compose and perform layered, avant-garde guitar “wall-of-sound” (aka "sheets of sound") improvisation-based pieces, I have posted over 500 tracks to Shema Yisrael @ Soundcloud. I have written a dozen or so scripts in various genres, including (1) a proposed series about the Black Panther Party circa 1970, called “The Struggle”, (2) a semi-autobiographical black film noir called “The Places of the Stars”, (3) a mythical, mystical, Dune meets Ancient Egypt drama "Akhenaten + Nefertiti", and (4) a Marvel-like superhero property called Ulysses. But it was as a logician by training and experience that I embarked on a long career in computer science, having worked in a number of elite R&D groups at the birth of the TCP/IP Internet. The only useful materials available in those days were “The C Programming Language” by Kernighan & Ritchie, the Bell Labs Research Journal, the Unix v7 Manual, the Internet Protocol Specifications coming out of ISI, and the Intel x86 microprocessor manuals.