Publisher's Synopsis
A THEORY OF EVERYTHING: Bill Harvey φ ABOUT THE AUTHOR Emmy(R) Award winner and media research industry leader, Bill Harvey has been lauded as a visionary and technological pioneer of the changing mediascape over the last 35 years. With an imaginative, unorthodox mind for research, innovation and invention, Bill started his career in the media business. He predicted today's media reality with his MediaWorld 1990 report to the industry and in his widely-read Media Science Newsletter, and he invented media research tools and measurement systems, including some now written into FCC regulations. Bill became a leader in the field as media morphed into being more interactive, putting the viewer in charge. In 2022, Bill received an Emmy(R) Award for the pioneering development of technology which protects privacy while collecting massive data on media usage at an aggregate level. In practical terms, this invention helps diverse audiences with a wide range of interests to get all the types of programs they enjoy the most. Considered the dean of living media scientists, Bill in 2008 received the Advertising Research Foundation's Great Mind Award, and in 2014 he became the first recipient of the ARF's Erwin Ephron Demystification Award. He holds four issued US patents and has consulted for over a hundred Fortune 500 companies. Working with neuroscientists, academics and industry on learning about the cognitive mechanisms connecting motivations and attention, Bill's company Research Measurement Technologies distilled a motivational taxonomy predictive of sales and audience behavior from every word in the English language in a series of large-scale experiments. This "memome" offers potential to the progress of psychology and to the next generation of AI Large Language Models. Bill first experienced the Zone-that space where innovative and successful ideas and actions flow out of you effortlessly-as a young child. The son of legendary orchestra leader/emcee Ned Harvey and former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Sandra Harvey, Bill started performing on stage at age four, dancing with showgirls and exchanging lines with comedic greats like Jack E. Leonard. He liked this feeling of being "on" and wanted to learn how to be "on" more often-and so began his lifelong quest to understand how to bring on higher states of consciousness and to help others do the same. Earning his degree in philosophy, the first school subject he ever loved, Bill founded the Human Effectiveness Institute, with the goal of sharing the consciousness techniques he had learned and developed. Bill's ideas didn't all come from the inside, as he was inspired by something that Milton Berle once told him: "Always steal from the best, kid." His ideas were further inspired by Alan Watts, Buddhism, Zen, and by his parents and adopted older brother, the multitalented Bill Heyer, second trumpet in Ned's band. Unique and ahead of its time, Bill's first book, Mind Magic: The Science of Microcosmology, met with rave reviews in the late 70s and was praised by thousands of readers whose lives, they say, were changed by it. Fans included John Lennon, Ram Dass, Norman Cousins, Daniel Goleman, and Jimmy Carter. The book has been used at 34 universities including NYU, UCLA and West Point, and by numerous organizations, and is now available in its 6th edition, Mind Magic: Doorways into Higher Consciousness.In his second book, You Are The Universe: Imagine That, Bill speculates about the true nature of reality, in which all that exists is a single divine consciousness made of information. In this view, religion is not at odds with science. Bill turned his theory into fiction, and conceived an epic series of novels entitled Agents of Cosmic Intelligence. Bill lives with his wife Lalita and their cat Zohreh in New York's beautiful Hudson Valley. He has a daughter Nicole; four grandchildren, Nicholas, Gabrielle, Jessica and Alexander; and one greatgrandchild, Zara.
