Simon Birrell (born 26 July 1966) is a British entrepreneur, technologist and film maker. He was part of the team that invented

ambient intelligence In computing, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence was a projection on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing ...

and who, with

Eli Zelkha Elias "Eli" Zelkha (May 4, 1950 – January 8, 2017) was an Iranian-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and professor. He was the inventor of ambient intelligence. He died on January 8, 2017, in Woodside, California California ...

, coined the term.

Biography

Early life, education and career

Born in 1966 in Bristol, UK. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1988 with a degree in Natural Sciences. He has been a founder or co-founder of three companies. Euro-Profile/i-Profile – a business intelligence company based out of Silicon Valley which was acquired by Virgo Capital (2008), Vemm Brazil, a publisher of consumer advice websites in Brazil which was acquired by

QuinStreet QuinStreet, Inc. is a publicly traded marketing company based in Foster City, California. QuinStreet offers performance-based marketing and search engine marketing services. QuinStreet was founded in 1999, and has launched or acquired dozens of we ...

(2015) and Silicon Artists, a Madrid-based entertainment technology company funded by Silicon Valley-based

Tandem Computers Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum upt ...

Ambient intelligence

In 1998, Birrell was part of the team at Palo Alto Ventures that invented and developed the ambient intelligence concept and who, with Eli Zelkha, coined the term. It was presented by Roel Pieper of Philips at The Digital Living Room Conference on 22 June 1998. Since its invention in 1998, Ambient Intelligence labs have been formed at leading universities and ambient intelligence has become part of the core strategies of many of the world's leading technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon and IBM.

Robotics and deep learning

Birrell is researching deep learning and robotics at Cambridge University. He is the author of the blog Artificial Human Companions.

Video games, virtual reality and other activities

He developed some of the first video games for

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expresse ...

Virgin Interactive Virgin Interactive Entertainment (later renamed Avalon Interactive) was the video game publishing division of British conglomerate the Virgin Group. It developed and published games for major platforms and employed developers, including Westwo ...

in 1983. These included Bug Bomb – BBC Micro (1983), Microbe – BBC Micro (1983), High-Rise Horror – Commodore 64 (1984), Strangeloop – Commodore 64 (1985), Shogun – Commodore 64 / Amstrad (co-design). From 1993 to 1995, Birrell was the CTO of an early virtual reality company in Spain called Realidad Virtual S.L. At Realidad Virtual, he developed Pandora – the first Spanish online virtual reality platform for the Internet. Mundo de Estrellas (1998) was a distributed virtual reality environment for hospitalised children in Andalucia created by his company Silicon Artists. He is also a film maker and writer. As a film maker, he has directed two shorts and collaborated with cult filmmakers

Jess Franco Jess is a unisex given name, often a short form (hypocorism) of Jessica, Jesse, Jessie, etc., and a surname. It may refer to: Given name * Jess Atkinson (born 1961), American football player * Jess Cain (1926–2008), American radio host * Jes ...

and

Jose Ramon Larraz Jose is the English transliteration of the Hebrew and Aramaic name ''Yose'', which is etymologically linked to ''Yosef'' or Joseph. The name was popular during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods. *Jose ben Abin *Jose ben Akabya * Jose the Galil ...

. Birrell authored a chapter in an MIT book on Information Design and co-authored a book on videogames.

References

External links

Birrell's blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Birrell, Simon 1966 births Living people Alumni of the University of Cambridge British artificial intelligence researchers British businesspeople British filmmakers British video game designers Virtual reality pioneers