Technoprophets

Technoprophets

Elder Statesmen | Technoprophet Intellectuals | Prominent Civil Libertarians
Legal Luminaries | Public Officials | Media Convergence Entrepreneurs
Design and Interface Gurus | Hypermedia Visionaries | Postmodernists
Dystopians and Neo-Luddites | Cyberpunk and Science Fiction Writers
Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence Pioneers

A list of possible technoprophets is provided below, along with some biographical information. I'll review the list and answer your questions in class, but go ahead and start skimming the list for people and topics of interest to you, if you don't intend to make a Web Project for the second half of the semester.* Papers must be between 9-12 pages.

If you do intend to write and/or present on a technoprophet, submit two names -- your first and second choices -- so that I can make allowances for students who want to work on the same people. I'll try to give all students his or her first choice of technoprophet, but realistically it may not always work out. I need to ensure that we have representation across the (sometimes overlapping) categories. Also let me know your preferences regarding presenting or writing. Some people are in their element in front of an audience, while others detest it. Give me an idea of which you like the most or dislike the least, or which you need the most practice with.

When I respond to your proposals, I'll provide suggestions of where to find material on your chosen technoprophet. I'll also suggest who might make a good opponent or complement for contrast and comparison. The below are only brief descriptions with essential information. In most cases, there is a great deal more. As someone familiar with this literature, I've developed a sense of what's a waste of time and where the interesting research can be found.

Depending on how many students choose which technoprophets, how the distribution works out, and how much class time is available for particular subjects, I'll schedule as much time for students who want to present on their Web projects and technoprophets as possible. See the Assignments page for further information on the overall course guidelines and evaluation.

When compiling the list, my aim was to be more representative than comprehensive. I've designated as "technoprophets" those thinkers and innovators:

who've significantly contributed to new technology and emerging media, thus achieving stature that transcends their respective fields,
who've published important books and articles, delivered important speeches, or otherwise produced work that can be accessed and reviewed,
who've changed how we communicate or changed our understanding of how we communicate,
who've produced work that is taken seriously by their peers, from whom they've earned (perhaps grudging) respect.

Additional suggestions are welcome. You may want to check out:

c|net's Movers and Shakers (and for fun, be your own technoprophet by filling in Don Steinberg's Predict-O-Matic)
Digerati
Internet Pioneers collected for Electronic Information Sources
Forbes Digital Thinkers (use pull-down menu to see names)
Net Moguls
Wired Bunch
Celebrities in Cognitive Science
Interviews collected at the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
David Donnelly's Media Futures Archive quotes numerous technoprophets
Great Thinkers and Visionaries, many of whom could be considered technoprophets
See also Wired's special edition: Scenarios: The Future of the Future
Additionally, I passed around in class the Oct Vanity Fair and Time Digital that spotlight the "cyber elite" (available in hard copy only)

Under Construction Below this Point . . .

Elder Statesmen ^

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940): Eminent German Marxist literary critic, Benjamin is important to cyberculture because of his influential essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
Jacques Ellul (1912-94): French sociologist, philosopher, and theologian, Ellul held that machines dehumanize society. His most imortant book is The Technological Society in which he argued that technology has become sacred in modern society. A selection of Ellul's quotes is available.
Harold Innis (1894-52): Canadian economist Innis is primarily known for being the teacher of Marshall McLuhan and for the books written toward the end of his life on the role of communication in culture, such as Empire and Communications, The Bias of Communication, and Changing Concepts of Time.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-80): Patron saint of Wired and cyberculture, McLuhan is best known for The Gutenberg Galaxy, Understanding Media, and War and Peace in the Global Village. He coined the expression, "The medium is the message."
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990): A philosopher and sociologist, Mumford is best known for Technics and Civilization, which is both a history and analysis of the normative role of mechanization on society.
Norbert Weiner: A child genius, Weiner became a mathematics professor at MIT who led interdisciplinary research in the fabled Research Laboratory of Electronics, which included among its members Jerome Weisner (who went on to co-found the MIT Media Lab among many other accomplishments). Generally considered to be the "father" of the cyborg, Weiner wrote Cybernetics and was a respected voice for the humane use of technology.


Technoprophet Intellectuals ^
Richard Dawkins: A zoologist who has developed a theory of evolution that encompasses digital code, in his most recent book, River Out of Eden, Dawkins describes "memes," organic ideas. See his interview in Wired, "Revolutionary Evolutionist."
George Gilder: Harvard-educated economist and political theorist, Gilder writes on telecommunications and the future of technology in Forbes ASAP and serves as an adviser to Newt Gingrich. See his forthcoming Telecosm. An archive of Gilderania is available.
Kevin Kelly: Executive editor of Wired, Kelly recently published Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines.
Nicholas Negroponte: Trained as an architect, Negroponte is the co-founder of the Media Lab at MIT and author of Being Digital. See his back-page columns in Wired.
Paul Saffo: Saffo is an attorney, professor, journalist, and director of the Institute of the Future, a management consulting firm based in Menlo Park, CA. See this interview with Saffo.
Peter Schwartz: Co-founder of the Global Business Network (GBN), an organization of business futurists and scenario planners influenced by the "post-capitalist" management theory of Peter Drucker, Schwartz is the author of The Art of the Long View.
Alvin Toffler: Author of Future Shock, The Third Wave, and the final volume in the trilogy Powershift. He often collaborates with his wife, Heidi, and is known for his affiliations with both Al Gore and Newt Gingrich. See his interview in Wired with Peter Schwartz.


Prominent Civil Libertarians ^: See also the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
Hal Abelson: MIT professor in electrical engineering and computer science, Abelson chaired the 1996 Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CPF), sponsored by the CPSR. Abelson ordinarily teaches the well-regarded Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier, but currently he's on sabbatical at the Hewlett-Packard Lab in Palo Alto.
John Perry Barlow: A retired Wyoming cattle rancher and a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, Barlow co-founded the EFF. A collection of his writings is available. See his Time magazine profile: "Thinking Locally, Acting Globally: An Ex-Cowboy and Rock Lyricist Turned Internet Activist Takes on the Censors of Cyberspace."
Stuart Brand: A co-founder of the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) and the GBN, Brand serves on the boards of the Santa Fe Institute and the EFF. His books include The Media Lab and How Buildings Learn.
David Chaum: Founder and chair of Amsterdam-based DigiCash, Chaum is an expert in the field of cryptography, with many publications that argue the importance of anonymous monetary transactions online. Chaum previously taught in the business school of NYU and was interviewed by Wired.
Esther Dyson: Dyson publishes the influential Silicon Valley trade newsletter Release 1.0, chairs the EFF, and served on the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIIAC), including serving as co-chair of its Information Privacy and Intellectual Property subcommittee. Half-Swiss, half-British, Dyson studied economics at Harvard. She's active with business development in central and Eastern Europe through her company EDventure Holdings. Her new book is Release 2.0.
Mitch Kapor: After founding and steering the development of Lotus Corporation (recently sold to IBM), which produces the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3, the PC revolution's "killer app," Kapor retired, co-founded the EFF, and served on the NIIAC. He currently teaches at MIT but his home page "is taking a rest."
Howard Rheingold: Roving cyberjournalist and member of the WELL, Rheingold has written a number of books on the computer revolution including Tools for Thought, Virtual Reality, and The Virtual Community. See also his Tomorrow columns. Rheingold currently is starting up Electric Minds.
Phil Zimmerman: Zimmerman developed Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) a method of encryption that uses a public and a private key. He ran afoul of the FBI, which classifies some forms of encryption as munitions, which cannot be exported over state or national boundaries. After a highly publicized investigation, all charges were dropped in Jan. Zimmerman is a hero among those who favor online anonymity. He recently received the EFF's Pioneer Award and the CPSR's Norbert Weiner Award "for excellence in promoting the responsible use of technology." Zimmerman is the chair and chief technology officer of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc.


Legal Luminaries ^
Anne Wells Branscomb: Branscomb is a communications and computer lawyer and professor at Harvard. The author of Who Owns Information?, she edited the Emerging Law on the Electronic Frontier issues of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC).
Mike Godwin: House counsel for the EFF and formerly a journalist and computer consultant, Godwin's writings are collected online.
M. Ethan Katsh: A law professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Katsch's main area of expertise is law and computer technology. He wrote Law in a Digital World and The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law.
Lance Rose: Rose is an attorney with Lewis and Roca in Phoenix, who previously was based in New Jersey, where he handled a variety of new technology cases. The author of NetLaw, Rose writes "Legally Online," a column in Boardwatch, perhaps the longest lived of Net-based print publications, and regularly contributes to Wired.
Pamela Samuelson: Samuelson wrote "The Copyright Grab," a powerful critique of the White Paper on Intellectual Property. A professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Cyberspace Law Institute fellow, and an EFF fellow, she's also a contributing editor of Communications of the ACM, for which she writes a regular column, "Legally Speaking." Samuelson is a MacArthur "genius" award recipient.
Lawrence Tribe: Author of the now classic "The Constitution in Cyberspace," delivered at the first CPF conference in 1991, Tribe is a professor of Constitutional law at Harvard who wrote On Reading the Constitution.


Public Officials ^
Bill Clinton: The good news is that construction of the National Information Infrastructure (NII - the GII is the Global Information Infrastructure) began during President Clinton's administration, and with the passage of the Telecom Act of 1996, universal service and media convergence may be more than a nice idea. The (arguable) bad news is that the cost has been the Communications Decency Act (CDA), the Clipper Chip scare, and the White Paper on Intellectual Property. See Brock Meeks's mixed review of the White House's Cyber Rights efforts in the Oct Wired.
John Gibbons: Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the White House, Gibbons co-chairs the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and manages the National Science and Technology Council. He earned a doctorate in physics from Duke University and previously held high governmental offices in energy conservation and the environment. The still alive-and-kicking Clipper Chip was initiated by the OSTP and the National Security Agency.
Newt Gingrich: Gingrich is Speaker of the House, a techno-enthusiast, and founder of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. "From Virtuality to Reality" captures this former West Georgia College history professor's interest in info-economics. See also his interview with Esther Dyson in Wired, a conversation between Gingrich and John Perry Barlow Barlow in George, and Yahoo's pointers.
Al Gore: Vice President Gore is the architect of the Information Superhighway. See his speech delivered at the Superhighway Summit in Los Angeles in 1994. See also Wired's "The Making of the President 2000" on the Gore-Gingrich futurist battle.
Orrin Hatch: Republican senator from Utah, Hatch served on the WGIP and chairs the Committee on the Judiciary. An advocate of the CDA, last summer he supported a bill that sought to remove control of copyright from the Library of Congress and create a new entity that combines all IP in one office administered by the White House, such as a revamped Patent and Trademark office. The bill has been postponed.
Reed Hundt: Hundt chairs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is undergoing enormous changes and challenges following the passage of the Telecommunications Act earlier this year. He attended Yale School of Law with the future President, and, in private practice before his appointment, handled cases involving telecommunications and emerging technologies. See Hundt's Internet FAQ.
Mickey Kantor: Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Kantor chairs the President's Information Infrastructure Task Force. See the first Leveraging Cyberspace Conference, held in early Oct. Kantor replaced Ron Brown, former Commerce Secretary, who died tragically in a plane crash last April.
Patrick Leahy: Democractic senator from Vermont, known as the "cyber-senator" and an environmentalist, Leahy was one of the first members of Congress to get an e-mail address, set up a home page, and obtain a PGP key. He was a member of the WGIP and a founding member of the Congressional Internet Caucus, which initiated VoteNet '96. Leahy has been an outspoken opponent of the Clipper Chip, including the latest initiative, and the CDA.
Bruce Lehman: Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patent and Trademarks, Lehman chaired the Working Group on Intellectual Property (WGIP), which submitted the White Paper on IP. Before his public service, Lehman was an attorney specializing in intellectual property and new technology.


Media Convergence Entrepreneurs ^
Marc Andreessen: Gen-X wunderkind co-founder (with Jim Clark) and senior VP of Netscape Communications, Andreessen "developed the idea for the NCSA Mosaic browser for the Internet while he was an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois and a staff member at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications." See "Why Bill Gates Wants To Be the Next Marc Andreessen," in Wired.
Michael Eisner: Chairman and CEO of Walt Disney Co., Eisner is the nation's highest paid excecutive and tops most lists of movers and shakers in corporate media convergence.
Larry Ellison: CEO of Oracle, Ellison pioneered the idea of the $500 "Net PC." He's forged alliances with Apple, IBM, Netscape, and Sun to set standards for the nonproprietary Web access device.
Bill Gates: The wealthiest private individual in the world for the second year in a row according to Forbes, Gates is co-founder (with Paul Allen), chairman, and CEO of Microsoft. His speeches and columns are available. Among his many other accomplishments, Gates founded and owns Corbis, which has pioneered the licensing of digital images. See also Yahoo's Gates pointers.
Andy Grove: Founder, president, and CEO of Intel, the microprocessor chip company, Grove is an industry legend who has written widely on engineering and management, and who currently teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business. His most recent book is One on One with Andy Grove. George Gilder has written about Grove in Microcosm and Telecosm.
Steve Jobs: Charismatic co-founder (with Steve Wozniak) of Apple, Jobs led the development team that created the Macintosh, the first commercial GUI personal commuter, based on R&D taking place at Xerox PARC. Jobs went on to found NeXT and Pixar. See his interview in Wired.
Bill Joy: Co-founder and research VP of Sun Microsystems, Joy significantly contributed to the "open systems" model of the Internet and is a member of the GBN.
Edward McCracken: Chair and CEO of Silicon Graphics (founded by Jim Clark), McCracken co-chaired the NIIAC, which advised the Clinton administration on the development of the NII and GII. He's received many awards and honors, including the President's National Medal of Technology.
Nathan Myhrvold: VP of research and online development at Microsoft, Myhrvold is the software behemoth's "resident genius." After earning a doctorate in theoretical/mathematical physics at Princeton, he studied with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University, where he conducted research on cosmology and quantum physics. A board member of the Institute for Advanced Study and a member of the NIIAC, Myhrvold is also known for his culinary skill.
Kim Polese: Kim Polese is president and CEO of Marimba, a leader in "push" technology, particularly in Internet-based news delivery. Polese co-founded Marimba with four former Sun Microsystems engineers in 1996. At Sun, she was the product manager for Oak (now known as Java) and played a pivotal role in conceiving and driving the Internet strategy for Java.
Steven Spielberg: Perhaps Hollywood's most powerful filmmaker and the founder-owner of Amblin Entertainment, Spielberg is also one-third of DreamWorks SKG, which has joined with Microsoft to form an interactive family entertainment company, initially called DreamWorks Interactive.


Design and Interface Gurus ^
Walter Bender

revised 05/19/98
wgrobin@duke.edu