I currently work for a pharmaceutical research organization as an application programmer focusing on Oracle databases and Oracle's web application, Application Express. For my personal projects (web crawler and projects listed above) I use MySQL. I have a BS in business science and a Masters degree in Ancient Near-Eastern Linguistics (Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Syriac, etc.). I still read classical Greek almost daily to get away from the techno-garble I deal with at the office and to give myself some sense of humanity. However, I attribute some of my projects directly to my studies in classics, primarily my application I'm working on that builds a grammar based on how the internet population is actively using the language. Since language and idiom change rapidly, my application will provide a real-time snapshot of the grammar of the web. If you are interested in these topics, you can contact me at alex@krysti.net.
Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler