John Bell is a web application developer, data artist, and adjunct faculty at the University of Maine New Media department. He has contributed to the development of The Pool, a system for fostering and documenting distributed creativity in digital arts; the Variable Media Questionnaire, a tool used in the recreation of technologically obsolete artwork; released several open-source web authoring tools; and given birth to an artificial intelligence that accidentally committed suicide. Many of his projects focus on trust in online communities and maintaining intellectual integrity in environments where there are few consequences to ignoring it. His work has been featured in Wired online and at Ars Electronica's Electrolobby Kitchen.