i'm michael bowen, creater of boohab and his website, boohab's factotum. i've been discussing social issues of all sorts online since about 1985 and began concentrating on black cultural production around '93.

my day job is business intelligence. i am a data architect involved with orchestrating information systems designed to help corporate folks make better decisions. i'm a proponent of weak ai, a devotee of the parc school of augmentation and the deming school of continuous quality improvement. i am fascinated by the ways people use computing systems to help them think (or not think).

i began to get involved with black cultural production back in '89 when somebody asked provocatively why black people get all upset when white people say rap 'is not real music'. my response took about 1700 words and a poem. i was an early participant in the open mike circuit in los angeles, and have also performed in nyc at nuyorican, st. marks and various other venues including the infamous march down 7th avenue headed by william kunstler and others following the los angeles uprising. my form of activism has a highly literary bias, but i am formally unpublished.

i took my writing and activism online having considering several venues of 'guerilla media' including spoken word, multimedia and cable access. so i began showing up in all the 'black' spaces online including some old forgotten bbs sites like idette vaughn's bbs, alex hartley's place. i ended up on 'the well' expecting a warm welcome and discovered that a LOT of people needed schooling on the basics. so following in the footsteps of my intellectual mentors, i dedicated myself to the practice of defining and teaching 'anti-racist praxis'. and so i have been a provocative figure in usenet, and various web-oriented discussion spaces for years.

i'm 36, married with 3 kids and recently moved 'back' to los angeles, having lived in atlanta, brooklyn, harlem, and boston. i'm an obsessive news junkie and compulsive reader. i'm the product of a new haven family and a new orleans family ("would you kindly pass me somadem mudbugs, sir?") i consider myself old-school socially, i'm an episcopalean with a jesuit education and i expect my kids to go to jack & jill. intellectually, i wish i were edward said - i very much dig on the model of insurgency outlined by cornel west. i know when to clap in jazz clubs and would consider any evening perfectly spent which includes at various points: whiskey, cigars, jazz and embarrassingly arcane debate. (oysters are optional)

it is my duty and pleasure to serve the public good through our joint creation. i am singularly committed to anti-racist activism; in concert we can move mountains.