Bio and not enough cross disciplinary knowledge acquisition

The author of one of the emails I got regarding tags for Trac was curious about my background and profession. He mentioned that I didn't have anything of the sort on my blog, so I thought I'd cross post my response here.

I am teaching my first course this trimester at my alma mater, a small teaching school in Columbus, OH. I have a master's degree in computer science. I also have about 9 years of experience in "the real world" doing computer consulting work. I've attached a resume on my page on the wiki.

But I think I've learned at least as much - if not more - about computer science by reading the likes of Daniel Dennett (Philosophy of Science and Cognitive Science), Richard Dawkins (Biology, especially evolution and its philosophy), Ian Stewart (Mathematics), Tom Robbins (fiction, specifically learning what "thinking out of the box" really means) and Robert Prisig (Zen and doing things "right" and with passion) to mention a few.

I've avoided academia because my perception is that academic environments are far too narrow, not willing or maybe unable to take advantage of the lessons learned in other, "unrelated" fields. This actually is part of the reason I started thinking about faceted classification systems.

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Consider this post my whine about the lack of cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing. If I ever figure out how to do so succinctly, I'll explain my vision of how faceted classification systems can help share knowledge across disciplines.