This website is just a repository for writing and films by Richard Patterson. Patterson studied philosophy at Yale and literature at Cambridge before embarking on a career in and around the film business. He worked as an writer, director and editor and spent the last half of his career doing digital imaging for visual effects. He received an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for this role in the development of digital bluescreen image compositing and is a member of the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy. For a brief period he was editor of American Cinematography magazine and he has written over 50 articles on motion picture production technique. He was the co-author with Harry Mathias of a pioneering book on electronic cinematography.
He always maintained his interest in philosophy and literature and later in life got a masters degree in humanities. Many of the essays on the website were written as part of the work towards that degree. The book on philosophical hermeneutics was written as his thesis. His interest in hermeneutics combined with the growing political divide in the country led him to explore the basic differences in world view underlying liberal and conservative or libertarian policies. After the financial crisis he focused more on economic theory and became convinced that the way we conceive of money has made our economic system inhumane and destructive.