Age: 61
male
Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, actor, leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, and member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30, Exotic Birds, and Tapeworm, among others. Reznor left Interscope Records in 2007, and is now an independent musician. Reznor began creating music early in his life, and cites his Western Pennsylvania childhood as an early influence. After being involved with a number of synthesizer-based bands in the mid-80s, Reznor gained employment at Right Track Studios and began creating his own music during the studio's closing hours under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. Reznor's first release as Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), was a commercial and critical success, and he has since released seven major studio releases. Outside of Reznor's chief project Nine Inch Nails, he has contributed to many other artists' albums, including Marilyn Manson and Saul Williams. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and Spin magazine described him as "the most vital artist in music." Reznor, in collaboration with Atticus Ross, composed the score for The Social Network, a 2010 theatrical film about the founding of Facebook. The duo won the 2010 Golden Globe for Best Original Score and the Academy Award for Best Original Score for their collaboration. The soundtrack album was released by The Null Corporation, Reznor's own independent record label. Earlier this year, Reznor announced that the pair would once again be collaborating with David Fincher by composing the score to the US film adaptation of the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, set for release in late 2011. Description above from the Wikipedia article Trent Reznor, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
The story follows the experiences of Case, an out-of-work hacker who is contacted by a mysterious new employer called Armitage. Along with Molly, a mercenary cyborg, and a thief/illusionist named Peter Riviera, Case participates in a series of data thefts for their employer. Their first job has them stealing an electronic copy of the mind of McCoy Pauley, a brilliant hacker who taught Case a great deal of what he knows. They steal this electronic mind to help them in performing their next job. After that, the group must head to Freeside, an enormous space habitat in orbit around Earth. Freeside serves as a luxury resort and casino for the wealthy, and it is also the location of Villa Straylight, the home of the incredibly wealthy and powerful Tessier-Ashpool family. The group's second job is to break into the Villa Straylight and hack into Wintermute, a powerful artificial intelligence created by the Tessier-Ashpool family. In the end, it turns out that Wintermute itself was behind the whole scheme. Government regulations put careful restrictions on artificial intelligences to prevent them from getting out of hand, and Wintermute was using Armitage and his team to break those restrictions. This allows Wintermute to merge with another A.I. called Neuromancer, becoming a new, more powerful electronic being.
