Dark Matter by Ian Douglas

Dark Matter by Ian Douglas

An enemy might just have to become an ally . . . in order to save humankind

The United States of North America is now engaged in a civil war with the Earth Confederation, which wants to yield to the demands of the alien Sh'daar, limit human technology, and become a part of the Sh'daar Galactic Collective. USNA President Koenig believes that surrendering to the Sh'daar will ultimately doom humankind.

But when highly advanced, seemingly godlike aliens appear through an artificial wormhole in the Omega Centauri Cluster 16,000 light years from Earth, President Koenig is faced with a tremendous choice: continue fighting the Sh'daar . . . or ally with them against the newcomers in a final war that will settle the fate of more than one universe.

Ian Douglas is an Associate Program Director at the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University and an Associate Professor in the university's College of Communications and Information. His research interests focus on improving human performance, particularly through knowledge management and user-centered design of technology. Dr. Douglas has a multidisciplinary background, with an M.A. (hons) in Psychology, an M.S. in Computing and Cognition and a Ph.D. in Computing. He previously worked as a consultant in a flight simulator company and as an educator in the U.K. and Singapore. He has been a visiting professor in the Philippines and China.

At Florida State, Dr. Douglas has been the principal investigator on a number of large research projects funded by the US army, State of Florida and the U.S. Department of Education. His most recent project investigates the role of web-enabled mobile technology in enhancing school field trips to science museums and nature centers. He has also completed several web-based databases with map-based interfaces, including one that was the inspiration behind this book.

Zhengjie Liu is the founder and director of Sino European Usability Center (SEUC), professor at School of Information Science & Technology of Dalian Maritime University, China. He is Adjunct Chair for Developing Worlds at ACM SIGCHI, expert member of IFIP TC.13 HCI Committee, co-founder and co-chair at ACM SIGCHI China. His areas include usability, user-centered design and human-computer interaction (HCI). He has been working in usability and HCI since 1989. He founded SEUC in 2000 as a leading research and educational center dedicated to usability/HCI in China. Since then, he has led SEUC conducting many research projects sponsored by leading players in industry including Fortune 500 multinationals and funded by EU and Chinese government.

He is on the editorial board of the Springer international journal Universal Access in Information Society. He also served as co-chair at international conferences including INTERACT, CSCW etc. He holds an B.E. and an M.E. Degree in Computer Science from Xian Jiaotong University, China.