Chris Porteous

Biography

Chris is a camera operator and lighting technician with more than ten years of experience in the video production industry.He is passionate about using striking images to shine a light on important issues, understanding that presentation can make a world of difference when it comes to generating support for a worthy cause.A long-time member of The Planetary Society, Chris is very passionate about promoting scientific literacy and hopes to use writing as a tool to further that movement.

Bakeries & Electric Brains

THE STORY OF J. LYONS AND CO. AND THE FIRST BUSINESS COMPUTER
Computers and the business world are inseparable today. Trillions of transactions are made and tracked electronically, currency is moved, invoices are paid, and values fluctuate in a digital ecosystem. We understand that this wasn’t always the case, but the lines that divide such eras in our history are rarely so well defined.

Eluding Extinction:
One Fish & 300 Million Years

Humans have a strange relationship with extinction. Cultural awareness of our impact on the environment is more attuned than ever, and at the same time, the damage we’re causing as a species is arguably at its peak. Back in the late Cretaceous the oceans sported a great many fantastic unfamiliar creatures. One was the already ancient fish, the Coelacanth...

Frozen Shadows:
Footnotes from The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration

It was not so long ago that there was one last continent that remained completely untouched by man. And, in a sense, this generation does not know how it feels as a culture to have that type of barrier breached during our lifetimes. The first lunar landing is the closest moment that some of us can recall, even though that 7th and final continental frontier is now far more accessible to any one than the surface of our lone satellite. Despite the distances varying in orders of magnitude, the race to be first on the moon has many parallels to the early expeditions to the Antarctic.