Currently, the only employee of ArborRhythms is Alec Rogers. Most of Alec’s recent efforts involve thinking about how to teach selflessness. This might seem silly, since selflessness has strong intuitive and emotional components, but walking a path is most often aided by a view of the destination
Academic Work: BS Psychology, BS Computer Science, and MS Electrical Engineering, from a mix of Cornell University, Reed College, Portland State University, and Boston University.
Software:
- 1996: ArborRhythms Music Processor, a way of producing MIDI and digital audio with a flow graph that resembles a syntactic tree, last known to run on Windows 95.
- 2003-2012: MATLAB, where I worked on Scientific File Formats, Image Processing, Digital and Multimedia Signal Processing, and System Objects.
- 2016: Psygraph, a collection of four tools designed to promote mindfulness.
Books, Conference Papers, and Journal Articles:
- 2017: Sustained Attention in Focused Attention versus Open Monitoring Meditation – Behavioral and Neurophysiological Changes. Poster at the 29th Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, Boston, MA, USA
- 2014: Mathematics of Enlightenment, a poster session presented at the Mind and Life Conference about parallels between Buddhist philosophy and mathematics.
- 2011: Cognitive Set Theory, a book describing a psychological model equating (psychological) concepts with (mathematical) sets.
- 2001: A Comparison of DHP Based Antecedent Parameter Tuning Strategies for Fuzzy Control, a paper presented at North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society conference.
- 2001: Dual Heuristic Programming for Fuzzy Control, another paper presented at the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society conference.
Other Academic Work:
- 2002: Analysis of the Instantaneous Estimate of Autocorrelation, a paper written at Portland State University that generalizes the notion of autocorrelation.
- 2003: Blind Signal Decomposition: A study in the separation of unknown signals, a paper looking at competitive filters as a means of signal separation, also written at Portland State University. You would probably be better off looking at ICA (independent component analysis) for this task.
Less Serious Work:
- (forthcoming): What is Selflessness?, a short essay about the basis for ethical action. Until it’s finished, you can read it and several other essays at: http://arborrhythms.com/essays
- 2015: Cup: Reflected, a 10-page children’s book which contains a psychological model.
Spiritual Background:
- Studied Buddhism (Indian and Tibetan) at Rigpa and Ranjung Yeshe in Nepal, and Maitripa University, BCBS, Garrison Institute, and numerous other retreat centers in the US.
- Volunteered as a retreat manager (Wonderwell Mountain Refuge) and resident practitioner (Upaya Zen Center).
- Undertaken several solo retreats, including a 6-month solo retreat.
- None of this indicates I am a realized practitioner, only that I have studied a lot.