One of Fluther’s brightest minds, Matt Browne (aka mattbrowne) regularly shares his insights with us. On topics as diverse as science and Star Trek, politics and religion, Matt is a regular font of knowledge.

We thought it was high time we gained a little insight on him, and he graciously consented to all of our poking and prying. As usual, Matt had a lot to say, so this is part one of a two part series.

Will you tell us a little about your family life?

I’m married. My wife is a biology and chemistry teacher. We raised two kids (fraternal twins, 21 years old) who are now both in college. Our cat named Siri is also part of our family and she holds a record in catching mice in our neighborhood.

Besides Fluther, what do you do for fun and relaxation?

Music plays a vital role in my life. I enjoy playing the piano and I’m also a member of a large choir in our nearby town. To fill the time during my daily commutes I often listen to music of almost any genre and flavor. Powerful and captivating melodies as well as rich harmonies are important to me. My favorites span a wide range. Everything from Johann S. Bach and Gabriel Fauré to Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Queen, and Enya.

I read about 60-70 books every year (both English and German, and both fiction and nonfiction). Here are four books I read recently that thoroughly impressed me: Why People Believe in Weird Things by Michael Shermer, The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies, Finding Darwin’s God by Kenneth R. Miller and Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. My favorite fiction authors are Sylvia Engdahl, David Brin, Stephen Baxter and Ken Follett.

I enjoy movies like Gattaca, Rainman, Forrest Gump, Bend it like Beckham and Once Upon a Time in America. Avatar was absolutely breathtaking. To me one of the best and funniest television series is Big Bang Theory. Maybe because I’m somewhat of a nerd too, although not as extreme as the Sheldon character.

We know you’ve lived in Germany and Kansas. Where were you born and what is your native language? How did you become so fluent in your second language?

My native language is German and I was born in Germany. I took 8 years of English in high school. When I began to study computer science in 1983, I realized that all of our younger German professors had published most of their articles and books in English. One of the professors told us outright that computer science is a global profession. The best people are all interconnected and there’s only one common global language: English. Well, I certainly wanted to belong to the group the professor was referring to.

How did you come to live in both places?

My major subjects were computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. All the standard textbooks were in English. One of my favorite German professors often talked about his time in the United States and he kept stressing the importance of international experience for aspiring IT professionals. Before completing my studies in Germany, I applied for a scholarship and became a graduate student at the University of Kansas in 1988.

My time in Kansas profoundly changed my life. I got married and became the proud father of twins. They were born in Lawrence, KS, a place where we met the most friendly and supportive people in the world. After graduation, we had to decide where to settle, and the decision wasn’t an easy one.

My first job took me to Munich. I joined an international team which had developed a machine translation system capable of translating texts from German to English and vice versa. The translations were okay for texts restricted to particular domains. Many words have multiple meanings, but when a program is supposed to translate, say, a manual for the installation of telephone switchboards, it assumes that the translation for the German word ‘Empfänger’ is receiver and not recipient or audience or beneficiary (all valid translations). Still, none of the translations were perfect and even today when you try systems like translate.google.com you sometimes get funny output like ‘If your dachshund to my dachshund dachshund says again, your dachshund get from my dachshund such a gedackelt that your dachshund dachshund can not say more.’

So our kids grew up in Germany, but are American citizens, and we try not to lose touch. As tourists, we get back to the US every other year or so. Often this feels like coming home, which is not to say we don’t like Germany. We like both countries, and it’s a bit of a shame that there’s this huge ocean in between. One of the reasons I decided to join, and become seriously involved in, American based Q & A sites is that I do miss America.

Did/do you prefer living in one place over the other? What makes it preferable?

We prefer the US when it comes to encouraging people to think big and try out new things. We love the pioneering spirit and the innovative, risk-taking entrepreneurship. Just consider how companies like Apple or Google have changed the world.

We prefer Germany when it comes to taking a serious interest in other countries and observing what other countries might be doing better. Many Americans seem to think that America is best at almost everything. Well, one has to take a closer look beyond borders to find out whether this is really so. Modesty and temperance are important values in Germany and this is very important to us. Our social market economy has been a very successful way of managing economic change while offering people a higher level of financial security. Health care for every citizen has been a reality since 1950. Green parties were invented in Europe. When it comes to environmental awareness and sustainable consumption, many Europeans think that America has a lot of catching up to do. But things are changing slowly for the better.

Where else have your travels taken you?

It’s absolutely wonderful to travel around the world and I’ve been very fortunate to afford all this and have a job with a global company that also involves business trips. I’ve been to more than 20 European countries and 40 states in the US. I’ve also visited countries like Canada, Egypt, Turkey, India, Singapore, and Australia. Other than traveling, I really don’t have expensive hobbies. I drive a small Ford Fiesta that achieves 65 miles per gallon, so higher gas prices don’t affect me much. When I travel by airplane, I donate money to organizations like Atmosfair.de to compensate for my greenhouse gas emissions.

There was a time at my company that involved a great deal of business travel, mostly to New York, but also some other cities like Baltimore or San Francisco. In many of our international projects IT specialists from Frankfurt, London, New York and Bangalore need to work as a team. There are cultural differences which have to be managed. But as people get older, frequent business travel loses some of its appeal. In fact, it can become quite a burden. And there’s a difference between having to fly to Milan or New York. Restructuring IT organizations seems like an all-time popular pastime, so a couple of years ago my focus shifted. Doing European projects is interesting and challenging as well, but as I said, I also miss this connection with America. Maybe this was one of the reasons I decided to write a science fiction novel set in the US. As already mentioned, to me the US is clearly the number 1 place in the world where people are encouraged to think big. Where else could a journey to the stars begin?

Please tell us about some notable influences in your life.

Dreamers think big and start small, while fools think small and start big. We all know about the famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech by Martin Luther King given in 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. It certainly seemed like a dream at the time and many small steps were necessary to improve the situation. Today Barack Obama is President of the United States of America. Some dreams do come true if you are willing to work for them. Well, I’m a dreamer too. And I share Gene Roddenberry’s dream of a better future free of discrimination, famine, war and poverty.

One of my other role models is Christian Fuehrer, a Protestant minister and one of the leading figures and organizers of the 1989 Monday demonstrations in East Germany which brought down the Berlin Wall without bloodshed and finally led to the German reunification. During the first months of 1989 the East German authorities imposed more and more pressure to stop the peace prayers in Leipzig. They controlled access roads and arrested random ‘suspects’ inside and outside Fuehrer’s church. However, they were unsuccessful and the Monday prayers continued with an increasing number of attendees.

Of course, I greatly admire scientists like Aristarchus, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg and Murray Gell-Mann. Science should matter to all of us. Even in our everyday lives. Here’s a truly amazing story about a British girl named Tilly Smith, who, at age 10, saved nearly a hundred foreign tourists at Maikhao Beach in Thailand by raising the alarm minutes before the arrival of the tsunami caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. She learned about tsunamis in a geography lesson two weeks before the tsunami and recognized the receding shoreline and frothing bubbles on the surface of the sea and alerted her parents, who warned others on the beach and the staff at the hotel on Phuket where they were staying. The beach was evacuated before the tsunami reached shore, and was one of the few beaches on the island with no reported casualties. I think millions of boys and girls should be inspired by Tilly Smith. She is a true celebrity, not the ones wearing fancy dresses and fashionable hairstyles.

What advice would you give to the general populace about how to use words as well as you do?

I think the most important factors are reading as many good articles or books as possible, practicing writing whenever possible (for example on Fluther), and a commitment to lifelong learning.

Based on your Fluther participation, you seem to be a rare breed: a scientifically-minded individual who also believes in a higher power. Which came first, the science or the faith? Do you ever have trouble reconciling the two?

I’d say first came my childhood faith, which was later replaced by the scientific understanding of our universe. I passionately believe in evidence-based thinking. But as an adult, I also realized that science cannot answer all questions, like what the ultimate purpose of the universe is. Seth Lloyd, who is a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, compares our universe to a giant computer running a program called the natural laws. Theists believe in divine authorship of this program, while atheists believe the program has the capability to write itself. Both views are acceptable to me.

My more mature faith, which I developed as an adult, involves more than just the belief in a higher power. There’s also the role of religion and the role of non-religious spirituality. Danah Zohar, who is a management thought leader, physicist, and philosopher, points out that our search for meaning is the primary motivation in our lives. Some call this search a spiritual endeavor. And it is when this deep need for meaning goes unmet that our lives come to feel shallow or empty. Our modern age seems to be defined by the breakdown of family and community and traditional religion, and the loss or absence of heroes. We live at a time when there seem to be no clear goalposts, no clear rules, no clear values, no clear way to grow up, and no clear vision of responsibility. Zohar argues that this spiritual void has come about as a product of our high human IQ. We have reasoned ourselves away from nature and our fellow creatures, and we have reasoned ourselves beyond religion. In our great technological way forward, we have left traditional culture with its embedded values behind.

I agree with her assessment. Deprived of a deep, meaningful center, many people seek meaning in distorted or peripheral activities like materialism, greed, violence, an obsession with health and beauty, drug abuse or New Age occultism. Eventually this can lead to cynicism and despair or mere conformity. So I keep looking for different answers and I think modern forms of religions have a lot to offer. There’s more to it than many people realize. I also think that a good metaphysical and ethical framework for our lives does not necessarily depend on (organized) religion. We should tap into all sources of wisdom available. To me God represents the ultimate framework of meaning and value, what Danah Zohar calls the ultimate context-giver and the ultimate ‘big picture’. We should all try to figure out our big picture and I know many people will find different answers. That’s perfectly fine. I was trying to outline what works for me.

You regularly blow our minds, but we’d like to know who or what blows your mind. Care to share?

When we take a deeper look at what’s going on in the core of our sun, this still totally blows my mind. The sun wouldn’t shine without the ‘magic’ of quantum tunneling. Protons disappear and magically pass through the barrier of another proton reappearing on the other side close enough for nuclear fusion to occur. It’s like you entering your house through your front door without opening it.

What else blows my mind? Here are a couple of examples in the form of ‘what if’ questions:

What if there were a complete merger between human technology and human intelligence, could we decorate walls using our thoughts? What if we could slow down the aging process, halt it entirely, or even reverse it? What if we stored the genomes of all living species in digital seed banks and find ways to bring them to life in the distant future? What if we built a space elevator that drastically reduces costs of lifting off materials from Earth?

Are these the people/things that inspire your questions on Fluther? Do you really wonder about the topics of your questions or do you ask them to spark discussion?

Most of my questions belong to Fluther’s social section. Very often I’ve got an answer of my own already, but I’m interested in the answers of others, because I like to challenge my assumptions. And yes, I do ask them to spark discussion!

What is your favorite question asked by you and why? Your favorite question on the site as a whole?

It might be Are liberals smarter than conservatives?, because there are so many great contributions. Particularly by Zuma, Qingu, Liminal, LostInParadise, Simone, Seek_Kolinahr, Fyrius, Trillian, and Nullo, when we were discussing the role of religion and the concepts of mythos and logos.

For the site as a whole, it might be What’s so bad about Sarah Palin?, because it explores the reasons why Sarah Palin isn’t qualified to lead the most powerful country on our planet. Her being elected would not only affect the US, but also Europe and all the other continents and it would have disastrous consequences. There seems to be a growing number of Republican voters who think countries should be run by normal people. They seem suspicious of people with degrees from Harvard. Being intellectual sounds negative to them. This is a very dangerous trend and we should do something about it. We need the people who are best qualified for a particular job. And it’s time to give the word ‘intellectual’ back its positive connotation.

Education is key. We need young people taking an interest in science and technology. We need optimism and bold, fresh ideas to allow our small planet with its limited resources to accommodate 8 billion people in the near future.

We need to find meaning and purpose in our lives. We need new goalposts, new rules, new values, and new visions of responsibility that meet the demands of the twenty-first century. It will be a yotta, zetta, exa, peta, tera, giga, mega effort.

But we can do it. Yes, we can.

That’s all we have time for at the moment. Please join us next week for Part II. Same jelly time, same jelly channel!