Jim Rutt

Jim Rutt is the host of the Jim Rutt Show podcast series. He is President and cofounder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance. He is the Executive Producer of the film An Initiation to Game~B. He is the creator of Network Wars, the popular mobile game. He is the past Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute. He was CEO of Network Solutions, which operated the .com, .net, and .org domain namespaces on the Internet until its acquisition by Verisign in 2000.
 
Jim was the first CTO of Thomson-Reuters. He was Chairman of the computer chip design software company Analog Design Automation until its acquisition by Synposis in 2004. Previously he either founded or played a key role in several significant information services and network companies: THE SOURCE, Business Research Corp., First Call, Pinpoint Information, Wall Street on Demand, and MarketSwitch.
 
He was Researcher in Residence at the Santa Fe Institute from 2002 to 2004, studying the application of complexity science to financial markets, and evolutionary artificial intelligence. He was Executive Producer of the awarding winning film “Zombiewood”. He is a cofounder of the Staunton Makerspace, a membership maker shop and hacker space.
 
Jim is currently an SFI Research Fellow working in the scientific study of consciousness and evolutionary artificial intelligence. Jim is also a member of the Board of Advisers of the Krasnow Institute and of the Virginia Tech Carilion Neuroscience Research Institute. Jim earned his B.S. degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and is a member of MIT’s Visiting Committee for the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences.