Michael S(ean) Sargent is a sanguinary second-generation native of the Front Range, writer, scholar, and technologist.
Born in 1969 during a brief parental sojourn in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, he was raised in his parents’ home town Cheyenne, Wyoming, an influence that would significantly color his perception of the past, the future, and the role of the individual in getting from one to the other.
Michael’s interest in technology and gadgetry finds its inspiration in early influences. Born almost exactly one month before the first moon landing (the closing act of the "Golden Age" of government space exploration) and graduating High School just over a year after the Challenger disaster (the closing act of the "Silver Age"), growing up in the center of the most powerful nuclear missile field on the planet, and widely exposed (by choice and preference) to an array of "space opera" in all media (Did anybody else rush home evenings to catch the radio dramatization of "Star Wars" on public radio?) as well as "Popular Science", "Popular Mechanics", and "Scientific American" on the nightstand and "Cosmos", "Connections", and others on television (Broadcast 'public' television, as often as not. Cable television, all 14 channels of it, was a late influence, arriving during Jr. High).
This interest in technology, mostly from the "What can it do?" angle, rather than "How does it do that?", also showed in a succession of favorite "toys" and passtimes including a Tandy "Science Fair 75-In-One Electronic Projects Kit", a Commodore Vic-20, and taking a FORTRAN class sophomore year in High School. All of which culminated one fateful day in January of 1987, when an Army National Guard recruiter visited Michael's JROTC unit and asked: "Does anyone here like to work with computers?"
Michael raised his hand and, lacking any specific plans regarding college (what to take or how to pay for it), was sworn into government service in the Inactive Guard and Reserve the next month. Basic Training at Ft. Knox, Kentucky and Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana consumed the remainder of that year and resulted in the awarding of Military Operations Specialty 74D10 (Computer Machine Operator) to (now-) PFC Sargent, fully equipped to enter the exciting world of mainframe operations, trained in IBM Job Control Language (JCL), Hollerith code interpretation, punched-card restoration, and other cutting-edge skills on a state-of-the-art 1965 IBM 360. Unfortunately, the system back at the home unit was a state-er-of-the-art Burroughs 1900 (design c. 1976), but adjustments were made and the Guard became Michael's primary source of income while attending Laramie County Community College through his graduation (A.A. History) in 1990.
Summers during this period were spent indulging a theatrical hobby acquired in High School and learning the direct impacts of late Industrial Age technology at first hand working as a summer maintenance helper at the local oil refinery. (This factoid will become significant later.)
Further academic advancement would mean moving out of Cheyenne and SP4 Sargent took the opportunity to transfer his Reserve commitment from the Army National Guard to Air Force ROTC when he enrolled in the University of Wyoming (Laramie, Wyo.) in the fall of 1990.
Two years later (1992), liftime aversion to Phys. Ed. and a native syncretic approach to the academic investigation of human endevours ("What do you mean 'focus on an area of study, it's called a major?") resulted in a Bachelor's Degree (Social Sciences), no officer's commission (and no service or monitary obligation), and the prospect of immediate unemployment in the face of his pending wedding to his High School sweetheart, Peggy Macke.
To cover some expenses he moved back to Cheyenne and took a short-lived job as a night-shift gas station cashier (yuck) while looking for opportunities to apply his newly-acquired academic credential. In early fall of 1992 the opportunity to totally ignore his academic background in return for excitement (read: danger), exotic new skills (read: climbing an 80' ladder in the middle of the night, in a snowstorm, dragging a steam hose to thaw out a control valve), flexible working hours (read: five days on, two days off, five on, two off, five on, three off, eight-hour shifts, rotating backward, so that no two weeks had the same pattern of days off or even light and dark hours of consciousness), and killer money (read: ... well, yeah, the money was better than could have been made at the entry level of his academic field) came in the form of full-time employment at Cheyenne's Frontier Oil Refinery. It was during this time that he developed his personal perspective on technological systems, realizing that (with the exception of certain specialized cases) it is largely unnecessary to know the exact inner workings of complex technology (most such processes are extremely predictable and reliable), the key to troubleshooting complex processes is in knowing the connections between the elements and the expected outputs at each step. Isolate the step that isn't producing its expected result or the broken connection between steps and correct or replace that element and the process as a whole is restored to working order. This model works for electronic systems, industrial plants, social networks, and a variety of other situations likely to be of interest.
After five and a half years of sleep disruption, schedules incompatable with the rest of the civilized world, and frustrated periodic attempts to make some kind of additional academic progress, Michael (with much spousal guidance, assistance, and motivation) determined that the only way to break away from the attractive pay and unattractive lifestyle imposed by the refinery was to leave the Cheyenne area entirely and, in the winter and spring of 1998 he and Peggy moved to Colorado Springs.
Since that time his experience with and fearless approach to a wide variety of cutting- and trailing-edge technologies landed him various positions in government military contracting. Steady pay, a stable schedule, and employer educational benefits (and a much-regretted blogging hiatus) have allowed him to recently complete an MS in Communications Management at Colorado State University's Denver Center while his wife also completed her MS (Organizational Performance and Development). [If you have an hour to kill and a sympathetic ear, ask them sometime about the marital impact of simultaneous enrollment in graduate programs meeting on alternate days 60 miles distant for two years while maintaining full-time jobs.]
The perspective Michael brings to the Speculist is born out of his roots in a small community with a relatively short history. Social networks on the Front Range tend to be smaller and flatter than they might be in other places. The number of relationships between one's self and certain socially- and historically- important figures is small. As examples, in his brief lifetime, Michael has personally met the all-around rodeo cowboy of 1906, multiple Governors, Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, and presidential candidate Gary Hart among others. All of this serves as justification to his personal belief that individuals, and the exchange of ideas among them, are the most fundamental influence on the direction and rate of technological and cultural change. Each individual has the capacity, and indeed the responsibility, to be aware of potential changes on the horizon, to evaluate them against personal preferences and values, and to exert their own influence on the process of either bringing these changes to pass or preventing others from doing so.
It is with great sorrow that I pass on the news that our dear friend and co-blogger 
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