Author: Richard Lee Buckner

Born in Dallas, Texas Buckner was raised in an orphans home started by his great grandfater. His father managed it and the family left in 1954 and resided in Dallas and New Orleans. A graduate of Woodrow Wilson High school Buckner attended SMU, Dallas College and Arlington State University. His BA was in math from UT, Austin in 1973. He took his MS in Computer Sciences from North Texas University in 1976 and worked in the computer and aerospace fields as a programmer through systems engineer. He was test engineer for the imaging system of the Voyager spacecrafts at JPL. He worked for Collins, TRW in Houston, Martin Marietta, Lear Siegler and Northrop.
In Houston he became interested in the arts and after moving to southern California in 1978 returned to school to complete three more degrees: M.S. in Computer Information Systems and Ph.D. in Management Information Systems and AA in Theatre at Moorpark College. He taught himself playwrighting and is interested in using IT in the theatre. His original contributions are using MS Word for scriptwriting with innovations in formatting and highlighting, and embedding music and pictures/videos in scripts. He has written 10 minute, one act and full lenght plays often featuring music, especially Celtic tunes.
Buckner\'s research was on human computer interaction, speciffically the productivity of using MS Windows. Windows were shown not to contribute to productivity because of the complexity that they added to the system and more importantly because they were a technological construct rather than a human construct. Buckner believes that only human constructs, built into a human-computer system from the initial concept, can increase productivity. He identified such a construct that he named \"viewability,\" a combination of seeing all you want on a screen at once and nothing else, and having it remain on the screen for they time needed to complete a work task using it. The validity of his results were orders of magnitude greater than the nominal p=0.10.
Buckner\'s writing is intentionally positive though not pollyannaish. His \"Kevis Katon,\" a dramatization of an ancient Jewish oral tradition was stage read in Hollywood and his \"The Crossings\" is due for similar treatment in December, 2009 in Thousand Oaks where he resides.
Buckner enjoys being a docent at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum and is an avid hiker, backpacker, camper and Nordic skier. He gardens and is an avid Internet user.