When cameras became electronic I became a photographer. The picture above is the fate of photographers. You only see the photographer reflected in the pictures he shows you. I hope you enjoy my pictures that are scattered through the website.

This particular reflection is a map of the Gilling West area. If you look right under the "y" of my name you will see Sedbury Park, the home of Christopher Boynton and several generations of Boyntons.

My parents named me George Robert Boynton, Jr., which gives you a strong hint about my father's name. I was born in Houston, Texas in 1935. And before I was old enough to go to school we went to the library weekly and returned with dozens of books. I never got over it. I went to school as long as they would let me. When there were no more degrees all that was left was to become a professor. I have been a professor of political science at the University of Iowa since 1964. And I am still as excited about learning and sharing what I have learned as I was when my mother was taking me to the library.

What I do these days is multimedia politics -- research and teaching. American politics has become multimedia politics, and that produces a very different politics than we had before TV. At the same time television is becoming global producing a global culture. These are what I research and teach.

The computer is integral to the research and teaching. I use it to digitize video, and then it is used in building presentations for meetings and websites.

I have managed to find computers integral to all the research and teaching I have done. When I was growing up I read quite a lot of science fiction. At the time there were only a handful of computers in existence, but I always knew that computers were built to help us do things we otherwise would be able to do only with great difficulty and that one day they would become as widespread as they are today and are becoming. My use began with my dissertation; I did some statistics on the computer. When I moved to Iowa I was put in charge of a key punch and counter sorter, which was the computer technology of the day. The next step was a big grant from the National Science Foundation to build a network with card readers and line printers. Then in 1978 the first personal computers. We got a Commodore Pet, which they thought would be used primarily by children. So they put a keyboard on the computer with keys so small that an adult could not type. The first piece of equipment produced to go along with the Pet was a substitute keyboard. And personal computing took off. So I got some money together and produced a network of personal computers for the department of political science -- before Novel and Microsoft networks. And it keeps right on going. A few years ago a doctor put a computer in my side. He calls it a defibrillator, but it really is a computer that keeps track of my heart. When my heart goes whacko it goes to work to keep me alive. I am a bionic man. I taught a course for a couple of thousand entering Iowa students; the course was about computing, and it was taught by me putting it on a compact disk, and students sitting at computers listening and following what I was saying to them. That won a prize from Microsoft. And now I am building websites about multimedia politics and about the Boyntons of Yorkshire.

Computers have been a constant in my adult life. Another constant is my family, but I do not need to tell you about them as they are going to tell you about themselves. But family and computers are joined for us -- as they are for many families. Our most recent common computer is the Cybiko, which is a handheld computer designed for fun. Every computer I have owned has been fun.

And the aesthetics. These are chairs I have loved: simple, clean design with straightforward geometic form. They were created by some of the most important designers of the twentieth century -- Eames, Saarinen, van der Rohe, Bertoia, and Stumpf and Chadwick. These are beauty, for me. And the website has much of the same character; at least I hope it has some of the same character -- simple and clean and lovely.