About Me

I am inspired by the belief that technology has the potential to level barriers to access and provide transparency to complex collaboration that results in shifting the zero-sum mentality we have today.

The most interesting thing to happen in my childhood was in 8th grade I received a “Don’t Hide Your Smarts Award“ while attending the tail end of a middle school transfer. This is funny because I was like, a mediocre student. Always. Thus began a long streak of me not knowing whether seemingly innocuous events were racist. I have a list. Beginning One Piece was also a highlight of 11th grade. After graduating high school I eventually learned that I could not do the direct sales order entry and needed to go to college. I had a friend, Anthony Munoz, who was in computer engineering and I thought that was cool, so I went back to Spartanburg, South Carolina to start my way up from the bottom, of the music industry… by becoming an audio engineer. I could not afford that so I went to community college, with Anthony in mind. Somehow I got into Clemson where I was very lonely and proving to be a pretty shit student. Meeting the friends I have today most definitely saved me from giving up on myself. I dropped out and had friends around me that could legitimize my coding skills just enough to pass me off as competent. Thanks, Bekk and Lorenzo.

While doing some work with a local startup and Clemson’s TRACE Lab, I attended a data science program at the coding boot camp formerly known as lambda school. I hedged in such a way that lambda school was my only leverage after my relationship with the startup ended, uhh, uncomfortably is what I’ll say because NDA and the research with the HCI lab at Clemson had been ruined due to covid. The coding boot camp formerly known as lambda school was proving to be a dead-end, mainly because I did not know I was competing against master’s students with solid fundamentals in their field of study. At this point, I was extremely shook.

At this conjecture, it was time to switch it up. Two things were certain. First, I must lean into the web dev skills I was already training by building stuff halfway like Tapfunds and feauxlosophy. Second, I knew that I had to abandon the coding boot camp formerly known as lambda school and traditional job search methods. And so, as Batman turns to Commissioner Gordan when the symbol goes up into the sky, I turned to Twitter. At some point I followed @ParissAthena who lead the Black Tech Pipeline job board. That is where I found my current position. My pitch went like this(edited for clarity because I run and gun when I’m passionate):

Good afternoon to you all at the Knowledge Futures Group,

I found your job posts through Black Tech Pipeline. I am passionate about open web services and open source knowledge systems. Tools like the internet archive are for the future what voyager is to the unknown. Further, I believe collective intelligence makes knowledge better by opening [ the process of knowledge creation ] up to criticism and testing or [ by ] simply removing the barrier for random interaction[s]. As Cass Sunstein mentions in Infototpia, creating shared knowledge systems has the potential to increase the quality of the knowledge base[.] [Historically speaking] Tools like Wikipedia, Google, or Arxiv  would be considered secret in societies who maintained knowledge as [a privilege]. I’m looking at ancient Egypt on this one. I am personally interested in knowledge graphs and tools that can link topics between research areas to create leads on future research. Performing open research allows for the creation of tools harnessing collective intelligence and AI/ML that can lead to scientific generation. Instead of random walks.

Is there anyway to get involved at a Junior level with any of these projects. Anything I can do to help would be incredibly appreciated. 

Thank you, 

Qwelian Tanner

It has been really nice to work with people I admire. To live with a partner I can admire and adore. And to be able to share this journey. Like so good I am positive I will have a stroke before 30.

To wrap up, what’s important is more of me stealing the ethos of Gabe’s About Page by saying I have never had any clue what the fuck was going on. I adapted, failed, and got lucky. I am really good at doing those three things. I imagine I will fail again and have to make deals with the Gods for safe passage. But if there is anything to know about me it’s that I WILL CONTRIBUTE TO GETTING US TO THE FUCKING MOON SO WE’RE NOT PLAYING THIS GENE GAME! NAH BABY! WE ARE TAKING EMBODIED LIFE INTERPLANETARY! IM TALKING ABOUT MARS TERRAFORMING AND FISHING ON EUROPA! YOU JUST GOTTA SEE THE VISION RIP POP SMOKE! WE NOT DOING STAR WARS, RAISED BY WOLVES, OR BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. WE DOING STAR TREK TNG! THE GOOD STUFF NOT THIS ACTION-PACKED PICCARD NONSENSE! IM TALKING REASON, LOVE OF EXPLORATION, AND SOME MORE SHIT! WE HUMANS! HUMANS! UNTIL I’M A ETHEREAL JELLYFISH ENCOMPASSING ENTIRE SECTIONS OF SPACE I CANT STOP, WONT STOP LOVING WHAT LIFE IS AND CAN BE!

STAY PASSIONATE

STAY CHILL

HAVE A GREAT DAY!