In the near future, young tech entrepreneur Declan Marchand invents Perpetuonics, a method of digitizing a living person’s character, knowledge, emotions, and memories — and then bringing that person back into “existence” after death. These Digital beINGS — Dings in shorthand — can theoretically “live” forever. They reside in massive servers, where they communicate with living people with the help of a living Compadore. They are also, of course, subject to rules and restrictions . . . until they begin to discover their own power.
Jeffrey Melvin Hutchins has been honored as one of the pioneers of the closed-captioning service that makes television accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. He was responsible for the development of the technology to caption live programs. Born in New York City, Jeff grew up in Saudi Arabia and attended high school in Beirut, Lebanon, before earning a degree in broadcasting & film from Boston University, where he met his wife, Diane. In the 1970s, Jeff was a TV producer at WGBH in Boston, and later was a founder of VITAC, the captioning company.
Since retiring, he has been the creator of a collection of children’s stories, songs, and videos about Denton the Dragon. In 2022, Denton the Dragon the Musical!, a stage show he wrote with Matthew Gould, debuted.