David Bunnell

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David Bunnell is a media entrepreneur and technology pioneer who was involved in the earliest days of personal computing revolution and industry.

In 1973, he got a job as a technical writer at a small electronics company called MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico, paying US$110 a week. In 1975, he was vice president of marketing, when they introduced the Altair 8800. While at MITS, Bunnell worked closely with Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who created the first programming language for the Altair, Altair BASIC.

Bunnell is the founder of several major media properties including PC Magazine, PC World, Macworld, Macworld Expo, New Media and BioWorld. He was the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Upside Media from 1996-2002. Bunnell is the recipient of the only Lifetime Achievement Award from the Computer Press Association. Tony Gold, Eddie Currie and Bunnell founded PC Magazine in 1981. Bunnell and some friends and his girlfriend (Jacqueline Poitier, who is now his wife) comprised, in part, the magazines founding staff.

Bunnell was in Triumph of the Nerds, a 1996 documentary, commenting Paul Allen demonstrating their BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 and how it was significant. Bunnell had one son, Aaron Bunnell, who was running Upside's online business and was on a business trip to New York to close a deal in July 2000 when he died at age 26 in his hotel room of what the coroner called a mix of heroin, valium and alcohol.

Bunnell is also the founder of Computers & You, a community computer learning center at Glide Church in the heart of one of San Francisco's poorest neighborhoods, the Tenderloin district. Computers & You provides computer training to thousands of poor adults and children. For several years, he also served a member of the Board of the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union.

[edit] External links and references

• PC Magazine, David Bunnell Remembers, 01.24.02
• Digerati: The Seer: David Bunnell
• San Francisco Chronicle, Upside's downside Tech magazine's founder lost more than money during publication's rise and fall, April 1, 2002