Jack Ring

Our friend and Ontolog Forum collaborator Jack Ring peacefully passed away on April 22nd, 2020, at the age of 85 in Mesa, AZ after a hard battle with liver cancer. Jack has been an active supporter of Systems Science development. He contributed to the joint programs between the International Society for the Systems Sciences and the International Council on Systems Engineering.

He was interested in applying or inventing technologies and systems for facilitating knowledge exchange and choice making among humans. His primary method was action research embedded in client-purposed projects such that the utility of his ideas and artifacts was critically judged by others. His primary field of endeavor was the creation of systems coupled with the test and evaluation of such systems as fit for purpose. He saw an ontology as the infrastructure for knowledge discovery, conveyance, vetting and utilization. Conversely, he viewed system models and realized systems as situated ontologies.

Since graduating in physics from Emporia State University he enjoyed 20 years with General Electric (Aerospace), 10 years with Honeywell (computers and industrial control), and then 20 years in a variety of endeavors with Edelbrock (corporate development in high performance automotive), Ascent Logic (corporate development in the first practical software for design of systems), IBM Consulting Group (helping initialize the object technology practice), and as mentor and coach to several high tech startups and turnarounds.

Since 2005 he was simultaneously a) co-founder of Kennen Technologies LLC, promulgating the recently patented, massively parallel General Purpose Set Theoretic Processor architecture and process, b) co-founder of OntoPilot LLC, promulgating automatic detection of all faults in algorithms, models and other forms of ontologies, and c) co-founder of Educe LLC evolving an architecture for an education system that "helps kids save themselves as fast as we can" and achieve a Bachelor's degree by age 16.

As a Fellow, International Council on Systems Engineering he was leading an effort to unify (achieve interoperability of) the languages used to describe and prescribe systems, systems praxis, systems engineering, error detection and correction and system models.

He foresaw the Ontolog community as an excellent collaboratory that will accelerate all facets of his work. He made many useful contributions to the Ontolog community. He will be missed.