About John Ball, founder of Thinking Solutions

John Ball has always been interested in how a brain works - even as a young boy working on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, back in the early 1970s.

He is dedicated to taking advantage of the underlying simplicity but apparent complexity of the human brain. On Australian radio, the ABC aired the high level talk on the Ockham's Razor program in 2000. John's 1983 brain model still forms the basis for today's language tools.

Many previous brain models fail because they presume brains to be too complex and fast to be copied. John’s model leads to greater insights into human beings than was previously possible: supported by the success of the prototype.

John worked for global computer and telecommunications companies between 1984 and 2006 in a variety of technical and management roles. Back in 1986, John visited a number of world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) development sites including MIT, Stanford and IBM's research lab at Yorktown to pursue this interest. The high degree of secrecy has since been lifted.

He worked as an Australian specialist for IBM, supporting mainframes and their environments in the region. He subsequently moved into major software development and business reengineering programs, in one case successfully using revolutionary business practices to complete work in a quarter of the time with a quarter of the staff. John's last corporate work involved consulting on large outsourcing change programs to major Australian-based companies.

John’s passion remains simple: ensuring that Thinking Solutions creates intelligent machines through the greater understanding and emulation of biological brains.

He holds a degree in Science from the University of Sydney, specialising in computer science, a Masters in Cognitive Science from the University of New South Wales and an MBA from Macquarie University. All of these institutions are located “down under” in Sydney, Australia.