A fan site for Charles J. Petrie, Ph.D. Born 14 September 1948, Austin-trained, Stanford-retired.
First hire of the MCC AI Lab in 1984. Founding editor-in-chief of IEEE Internet Computing. Stanford logician, coordination theorist, one of the earliest editors of the WWW Virtual Library, and for four years the manager of Burning Man's airport.
Charles J. Petrie, Ph.D., is a retired Senior Research Scientist of the Stanford Computer Science Department's Logic Group. He was the first person hired into the AI Lab that Woody Bledsoe founded at MCC in Austin in 1984, and led Proteus, the first MCC technology to reach a commercial product. He was the founding editor-in-chief of IEEE Internet Computing, which he put online by hand-coding every article into HTML so that a magazine called Internet Computing would exist on the Internet. He was one of the early editors of the WWW Virtual Library, the founding executive director of the Stanford Networking Research Center, and the founding chair of the Semantic Web Services Challenge. From 2013 to 2017 he managed Black Rock City Municipal Airport, the temporary airport at Burning Man.
That paragraph is the short answer; the biography gives the year-by-year version with a source on every line, and the FAQ answers the usual follow-ups.
Five things he did first, or early, each with the source it comes from.
In 1996 the IEEE Computer Society asked him to start a magazine about the Internet. Magazines mostly were not on the Web then and the Society had no digital library. He converted every article by hand into HTML and posted it on the Society's server, and wrote later that he was not going to start a magazine called Internet Computing that was not available online. It was the first Computer Society magazine online, and it is still published today. Source: Internet Computing Begins, 2017.
His MCC and University of Texas work on dependency-directed backtracking, truth maintenance and constraint satisfaction became Proteus, an expert-system shell that NCR turned into the Design Advisor, the first commercial product built on MCC technology. His Redux model of design decisions and their dependencies followed him to Stanford and into agent-based engineering. Source: his Proteus page.
At Stanford's Center for Design Research he built Redux', ProcessLink and JATLite, an early Java agent infrastructure, for coordinating distributed engineering. The same idea, that the network should notice when one person's change affects another's work, became his argument in 2010 that the future of the Internet is coordination. Source: The Future of the Internet is Coordination, 2010.
The Semantic Web Services Challenge he founded in 2006 was, in his CV's words, the first initiative to objectively test web service technologies on common scenarios. The first year's results became a Springer book he co-edited. Source: his CV.
He managed the volunteer-run airport at Burning Man, 88NV, from 2013 to 2017, with about 300 volunteers, software he designed to track every plane and passenger, and an operating manual he helped write. IEEE Spectrum profiled him for it in 2018 and quoted his project rule: you don't have a plan, you have dependencies. Source: IEEE Spectrum, 2018.
Six of the thirty-odd entries on the biography page. He would call them dependencies, not a plan.
In April 1984 he joined the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation in Austin as the first person hired by Prof. Woody Bledsoe for its AI Lab. MCC was the first large US computer-industry research consortium, formed in 1982 under Admiral Bobby Inman as a response to Japan's Fifth Generation project. Source: his Stanford bio.
Joined Stanford's Center for Design Research as a Senior Research Scientist in September 1993 and, by his own account, had everyone throw away paper and put everything on the Web using Mosaic. He carried a Sun SPARC in his luggage to give a DARPA presentation from its web server that year, and started the Mechanical Engineering section of the WWW Virtual Library, the volunteer-edited index that predates Wikipedia. Source: Internet Computing Begins, 2017.
Founding editor-in-chief. His first column, The New Engineering Computer, asked whether the Internet was the CB radio of the 90s or the Los Angeles of the 40s, an urban frontier where anyone could create something new. He hand-coded the whole magazine into HTML so it was free and online, the first Computer Society magazine to be so. Source: The New Engineering Computer, 1997.
Founding executive director. He ran it as a start-up and within the year it was the largest research center in the Stanford School of Engineering. The same year Lissa Shoun established the Black Rock City airport, and he joined her. Source: his Stanford bio.
Founding chair, with STI Innsbruck and DERI Galway, of the first initiative to test semantic web service technologies against common scenarios. He chaired it through 2010 and co-edited the first year's results for Springer. Source: his CV.
Airport manager, January 2013 to January 2017, of a temporary FAA- and Nevada DOT-inspected airport that for a few days ranks around 68th in the country by traffic and doubles as a second gate into the event. About 300 volunteers, a Ministry of Customs he initiated, and the first manuals defining every airport role. Source: his Stanford bio.
Many ask if the Internet is the CB radio or the 8-track cassette player of the 90s. The better question is whether the Internet is the Los Angeles of the 40s: an urban frontier of the Far West, where every person has a chance to create something new and fine.
It was difficult, but I wasn't going to start a magazine called Internet Computing that wasn't available online.
You don't have a plan, you have dependencies.
Background
Conference/Workshop/Journal Organization
Selected Publications
Memberships
His professional bio has lived at the same Stanford address since 1993, in the HTML of that year. We captured it on 2026-09-14, kept every tag, hosted his photo and gifs here, and pointed each dead conference link at the Wayback Machine.
All from petriepictures/ on his Stanford home page, where he posted them; dates are from the file names and listing.
Verified as his: a TEDx in Belgium and a Karlsruhe lecture. The videos page adds context footage on MCC, the early Web and the airport, labeled as such.
His TEDx talk in Kortrijk, Belgium, 25 January 2012. The event's theme, emergent collectives, was taken from his Internet Computing writing.
TEDx Talks on YouTube; a talk by Charles PetrieThe Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's recording of his talk on the Coordinated Internet, the argument of his FES2010 paper, from his 2012 guest professorship.
KITinformatik on YouTube; a talk by Charles PetrieCharles J. Petrie, Ph.D., is a retired Senior Research Scientist of Stanford University's Computer Science Department (Logic Group). He was the first hire of the MCC AI Lab in Austin in 1984, led the Proteus project, was the founding editor-in-chief of IEEE Internet Computing, the founding executive director of the Stanford Networking Research Center, and the founding chair of the Semantic Web Services Challenge. From 2013 to 2017 he managed the Burning Man airport, 88NV.
No. This is an independent fan and tribute site. His own pages are at www-cdr.stanford.edu/~petrie, and an archived copy of his professional bio, as it looked, is at /classic/ on this site.
Founding IEEE Internet Computing in 1997 and putting it online by hand, so it was the first IEEE Computer Society magazine on the Web; the Proteus reasoning system at MCC, the first MCC technology to reach a commercial product; the Redux model of decisions and dependencies; and his writing on the Coordinated Internet and emergent collectives.
B.S. in Mathematics from Louisiana State University (1969), and M.S. (1986) and Ph.D. (1991) in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, advised by Prof. Robert Simmons.