About the Omniverse Project

The Omniverse Project centers on the concept “quality of life.” When asked what could be done to maintain a prosperous and peaceful kingdom, Confucius replied that it starts with a single harmonious household. Likewise, I have come to believe that preserving the environment and improving the world are objectives which are intimately linked with the quality of life enjoyed by individuals and families. Truly happy people do not feel greed, jealousy, or anger, and therefore will not tend to exploit their kin nor abuse the environment. What makes people truly happy, you ask? There are many answers, of course, but the ones I prefer center on rediscovering our true nature, our link to the Earth and to each other.

To sum it up neatly, the ultimate goal of the Omniverse Project is to promote positive change both in individuals’ lives and from a global (environmental, financial, technological) perspective, within the belief that the two levels are intimately linked. A tall order, you say? Well, every little bit counts and I would rather put my weight, such as it is, on the right side of the cosmic scale.

The Project has both a research and a publishing component. The publishing component mainly takes the form of a quarterly newsletter / magazine entitled “The Omniverse Chronicles,” which is in spirit an encyclopedia in perpetual construction. The research component is referred to as “The Omnilab” and pursues various research mandates compatible with the general goals of the Project. Such research is typically alternative, broadly cross-disciplinary, and culturally different from most research performed in mainstream institutions.

A large part of the content of this website is public, and comments are welcome from everybody. Short abstracts of each piece appearing in the “Chronicles” will be posted in a blog-like format and available to the public. The full content of the Omniverse Chronicles, however, is only available to members of the Project. The membership fee, starting at 35$ / year, includes among other benefits a subscription to the Chronicles. Proceeds will help support Omnilab research mandates, membership-driven and community-building services and events, and in general any activity that furthers the goals of the Omniverse Project.

About this website

What is this website exactly? Is it a blog? Is it a private club? Neither and both. It is the web presence of the Omniverse Project, and as such the web companion of the Omniverse Chronicles. The latter is a magazine-style publication published four times a year. It is a print publication in the sense that it has a definite beginning, a definite end, some care and rigor is invested in its preparation and it is formatted on letter-sized pages (it is also - ahem - actually available on paper). It also extends into Cyberspace in various ways. Its articles are tagged, categorized and cross-referenced. They are available on the website in the form of blog posts, although only the abstract is available to non-members. Therefore, these are not your typical spur-of-the-moment blog posts, but rather carefully written articles with a certain emphasis on reference value. In their electronic form, these articles provide relevant links to the rest of the Internet and form part of a system for organizing knowledge which is currently in development and at the Omnilab, based on so-called “knowledge trees.” For example, a system of classifiers and qualifiers was devised, along with associated icons, to organize the articles. It was found later that this system could be made to correspond fairly well (but not perfectly) with the categories and tags provided by blogging systems such as Wordpress.

The articles will be complemented from time to time by spontaneous comments and discussions, as can be found in the mainstream blogosphere.

About the author

Sébastien Roy is the founder of the Omniverse Project and the sole author of all articles. This may change, however, since many people have expressed a keen interest in getting involved, and community-building is after all one of the original goals of the Project.

The said project is the result of many years of philosophical reflexion on the state of the world and a profound desire to accomplish something that is truly useful and positive. Sébastien was born March 31st, 1968, in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada and grew up in the small fishing village of Petit-Rocher. He always had an overactive mind and imagination, and expressed interest for both scientific (”building gadgets”) and artistic (mostly writing, but also acting, visual arts, and music) pursuits. Underpinning these various interests was a deep connection with everything that was futuristic and forward-looking. He was keen on everything related to science-fiction, but mostly when it depicted a positive outlook on man’s future. During his teenage years, he wrote science-fiction stories, and drew graphic novels as a hobby. His interest in technology at the crux of the microcomputer revolution led him to pursue studies in electrical engineering. He completed his Bachelor and Masters degrees, both in electrical engineering and both at Laval University (Quebec City) in 1991 and 1993, respectively. He worked as a freelance consultant for some years, and went back to school to obtain his PhD from Carleton University (Ottawa) in systems engineering in 2000.

He then engaged into an academic career, although he was never fully comfortable with the more traditional and somewhat dogmatic aspects of that environment. He was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Laval University between 2000 and 2002. In 2002, he became an Assistant Professor in the same department. In 2000, he received the Postgraduate Research Award for Excellence from the Canadian Institute for Telecommunication Research. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and obtained tenure in 2005. In 2007, he received the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Technology Transfer from SYTAcom, a multi-university network on systems and technologies for advanced communications. Between 2002 and 2007, he received 4 teaching awards. He currently collaborates with corporations such as InterDigital and Ericsson and was involved in the organization of several international conferences. In 2007, he was an invited professor at the École Nationale Supérieure de Sciences Appliquées et de Technologie (ENSSAT), in Lannion, France. He is the author or co-author of more than 70 conference and journal papers, as well as two book chapters. He holds one U.S patent and has 7 more patent applications pending.