MAXWELL ANDERSON

## SUMMARY

A vivid dreamer in his youth, and an insightful entrepreneur throughout his life, Maxwell Anderson is considered the grandfather of the modern age.

## HISTORY

Maxwell Anderson was born in a small town in Indiana to a single mother, his father passing away shortly before his birth. Throughout his childhood, he witnessed his mother struggle to provide, wishing he could do more to assist her. When he reached the age of eighteen, Maxwell left home for San Francisco, aiming to make what wealth he could and lift his mother from poverty.

At the age of twenty, Maxwell found an internship with a computing development firm. His work was primarily reserved to maintenance services, replacing faulty or worn parts on large mainframes. While his work was dull, the field was of great interest to him. He was enraptured by the writings of emerging authors in the genre of speculative fiction, awed by their descriptions of a computerized world. This sparked Maxwell's drive to make his own name in the field of computer research and development.

In 1979, Maxwell Anderson founded Anderson Technology Solutions, LLC. His company consulted on the design and production of microprocessors, frequently working with larger firms to bring forth the next innovations in computer technology. All the while, Maxwell held close his dreams of a new world, pouring hours of his personal time into researching the potential of artificial intelligence. He had many detractors, others in his field mocking his obsession with what they deemed to be squarely in the realm of science fiction. Their words bothered him little, his passion kept alive by each small discovery he had made.

With the war in Vietnam fresh in his memory, Maxwell began dreaming of a world in which his computers could do the fighting, negating the need for young men to be taken from their families to die on foreign soil. He himself had managed to avoid the draft, but his mother had informed him that several of his childhood friends had not been so lucky.

In late 1984, at a book signing for the historic release of the novel Neuromancer, Maxwell met a young woman named Evaline Toussaint. The two shared a deep discussion over their love of various authors in the realm of speculative fiction, Evaline becoming fascinated in Maxwell's descriptions of his real research into the creation of intelligent systems. After a few months of courtship, it became apparent that the two were inseparable. Evaline joined Maxwell in his San Francisco home, spending most evenings discussing the theoretical implementation of fantastical systems that Maxwell dreamed of creating. The pair married in the spring of 1988.

After nearly two decades together, their home with one another had taken on a subtle quality of emptiness, as if their duo was one short of the trio it was meant to be. In the summer of 2002, Evaline gave birth to Rachel Evaline Anderson, completing the family once again.

Shortly after, in 2006, Evaline Anderson was killed, struck on the sidewalk by a drunk driver as she was walking home from a nearby store. The loss of his wife caused immeasurable grief for Maxwell, but it was nothing compared to the anguish of having to explain to his four-year-old daughter that her mother wasn't coming home. For a long period of time, there was a hush within the house, several years passing before normalcy began to return. Maxwell doubled his efforts at work, convinced that some sort of intelligent device could have prevented the collision from occurring, either by driving the car for the intoxicated man, or at the very least correcting his course. He felt he had become lax in his efforts, complacent due to his happiness in his family life. There had been a prototype of a self-driving car over a decade ago, and he had yet to get a working model of artificial intelligence. Frequently, Rachel would be brought into the office alongside her father once school was let out, as child care was often hard to secure.

Over the course of the following six years, Maxwell continued to delve deeper and deeper into his work. His daughter couldn't understand the specifics of his research, but she understood its importance to her father. Definitive strides were made, placing Anderson Technology Solutions at the front of the charge towards artificial intelligence, but for every breakthrough, there was an increasing amount of social backlash among those who saw a potential danger in a computer capable of thought.

In the year 2012, Maxwell Anderson was killed, shot in a boardroom alongside several of his peers. He left behind his company, and his ten-year-old daughter.

## REFERENCES

RACHEL ANDERSON | MORTIMER

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