John is a developmental systems theorist who studies science and technological culture with an emphasis on accelerating change, computational autonomy and a topic known in futurist circles as the technological singularity. He is chairman of the Institute for Accelerating Change (IAC, Accelerating.org) a nonprofit community that seeks to help individuals better understand and manage continuous accelerating change.

He has a B.S. from UC Berkeley, has done graduate work in human physiology and medicine at U.C. San Diego, and coursework in biological, cognitive, computer and physical sciences at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UCSD. He is presently completing an M.S. in Future Studies at the University of Houston, and writing his second book, Destiny of Species, on the topic of accelerating change. He is director of IAC's annual Accelerating Change Conference (AC2003, Stanford University, Sept. 12-14, 2003) a place where science, technology, business and humanist speakers debate and explicate the topic of accelerating change, from both universal and local perspectives. John has run three businesses, his last for nine years as CEO of Hyperlearning, a 50-employee educational services company, sold to The Princeton Review in 1996.