Mark McCahill, Collaborative Systems Architect
Mark P. McCahill is a collaborative systems architect with Duke University’s Office of Information Technology. His work is focused on the development and implementation of 2D and 3D enterprise-level collaboration technologies in support of research and education. In 1989, McCahill lead the team at the University of Minnesota that developed one of the first popular Internet e-mail clients, POPmail. In 1991, he led the original Internet Gopher development team. Working with other pioneers such as Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen, and others. McCahill was involved in creating and codifing the emerging standard for Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). In 1994-95 McCahill’s team developed GopherVR, a 3D user interface for the Internet Gopher protocol to explore how spatial metaphors could be used to organize information and create social spaces. Mark was also one of the six principal architects of the Croquet project (along with Alan Kay and others). He is also the managing editor of The Alphaville Herald (formerly known as The Second Life Herald), a newspaper covering virtual worlds. Mark also teaches about virtual worlds at Duke University.
