Jensen Kaplan (June 19, 1964 - September 8, 1996) is an American computer professional, engineering enthusiast and innovator.
Kaplan was the founder of SolGen, a small company widely known for its innovative human augmentations. His goals were to break the barriers of human limitations through technological means. Kaplan made his first breakthrough from artificial body augmentations that not only treated illness and disability, but it also inhibited humans to surpass their current level of physical fitness.
Kaplan was born in Wichita, Kansas. His father, Jared Kaplan (1933-2001), came from a family of engineers and pursued the same career path. His mother, Rena Kaplan (1936-2006), was born in Michigan as the youngest child in a family of eight who later became a psychologist. Jensen Kaplan's siblings were Christopher Kaplan (1969-2010), Margaret Kaplan (1974-2006), and Frederick Kaplan (1975). Jensen grew up seeing his family deal with all kinds of illnesses, from his brother Christoper who ended up with a severed arm to his sister with a spinal cord injury. As the oldest sibling, Jensen made it his life's work to help his family deal with the illnesses through his creation of human augmentations. At a young age, Kaplan spent most of his times reading books. He taught himself computer programming at age 14 and used it to create website databases where he would store all of the information about human technology. Kaplan was very interested in how technology impacted the world around him, and he would spend hours learning about technologies while trying to replicate them. He eventually became obsessed with trying to create artificial intelligence, seeing that it was was the next step in mankind's history.
At age 30, Kaplan revolutionized human history with the creation of the first human augmentation. Though his creation was never fully revealed because a lot of people speculated that the augmentations were not fully functional. Kaplan founded SolGen along with two others, Jerry Sijil and Frank Horton, to further research into neural transplants. Figuring his cause was for artificial intelligence, a lot of people were against his idea because it would presumably bring about the end to humanity. The first outbreak for SolGen was when one of the augmentations was hacked by officials from a hacker group located in China. A lot of information was stolen from the company and therefore a lot of companies were able to make their own super-intelligence systems. Jensen Kaplan met his untimely death on the day of a huge business deal to merge with an undisclosed robotics company. On his way back from the meeting of negotiations, Kaplan was killed in an armed robbery incident trying to save someone's life. Kaplan's parents were in distraught as they weeped the death of their son.
Kaplan's human contributions would have made a huge change in the world of technology. But after the passing of Kaplan, the two friends that he started his company with were not able to continue the research into artificial intelligence due to a huge loss in the group. Kaplan, of the three, was the brains of the group and the visionary figure that propelled the three into SolGen. Eventually the company lost its supporters and became bankrupt due to the loss in leadership. Jerry Sijil and Frank Horton later went to work in a different industry and the work of Jensen was picked up by companies to make their own kinds of super-intelligence systems.