Suckling's parents and siblings immigrated to the United States from Ireland and England in the 1960s. He is the only member of his immediate family born in the United States. As a child, he lived with his family in Ireland, England, Peru, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts. Following the divorce of his parents, he settled in
Cape Cod, graduating from
Sandwich High School in 1982. He entered
Salve Regina University, in Rhode Island, in 1982, then transferred the following year to double major in computer science at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute and philosophy at the
College of the Holy Cross. He was culturally and politically active in college, editing literary and science magazines, organizing poetry readings, founding a chapter of
Student Pugwash USA, working for the
Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group and participating in political rallies and teach-ins opposing U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and advocating global nuclear disarmament. He received a BA in
Philosophy from College of the Holy Cross in 1987 and went on to study natural language processing as a fellow at
Stanford University's
Center for the Study of Language and Information and math at
Columbia University. He has examined the implications of the global homogenizing of biodiversity, language and culture, and the relationship between environmentalism, the arts, and the rights of indigenous peoples and poor communities. ==References==