Esther Dyson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Esther Dyson in San Francisco in 2005

Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951 in Zürich, Switzerland) is a self-described authority on emerging digital technology, and considered a founding member of the digerati.

Dyson is the daughter of Freeman Dyson, a physicist, and Verana Huber-Dyson, a mathematician, and the sister of the digital technology historian George Dyson. After graduating from Harvard in economics, she joined Forbes as a fact-checker and quickly rose to reporter. In 1977, she joined New Court Securities as "the research department," following Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research and in 1983 bought the company from her employer Ben Rosen, renaming it EDventure Holdings. She sold EDventure Holdings to CNET Networks in 2004, and left CNET in January 2007, closing her PC Forum conference.

Dyson and her company EDventure specialize in analyzing the impact of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies. She created the following publications on technology:

Release 1.0, her monthly technology-industry newsletter, published by EDventure Holdings. Until 2006, Dyson wrote several issues herself and edits the others. When she left CNET, the newsletter was picked up by O'Reilly Media, which appointed Jimmy Guterman to edit it and and renamed the newsletter Release 2.0, which is also...
Release 2.0, her 1997 book on how the Internet affected individuals' lives. Its full title is Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age. The revision Release 2.1 was published in 1998.
Release 3.0, her bimonthly column for the New York Times, distributed via its syndicate and reprinted in Release 1.0.
Release 4.0, her weblog. On March 4, 2005, this weblog moved to Dyson's Flickr account ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/ ).

Dyson is an active member of a number of non-profit and advisory organizations. From 1998 to 2000, she was the founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. As of 2004, she sat on its "reform" committee, dedicated to defining a role for individuals in ICANN's decision-making and governance structures. She has followed closely the post-Soviet transition of Eastern Europe, and is a member of the Bulgarian President's IT Advisory Council, along with Vint Cerf, George Sadowsky, and Veni Markovski, among others. She has served as a trustee of, and helped fund, emerging organizations such as Glasses for Humanity, Bridges.org, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Eurasia Foundation. She is also a member of the board for The Long Now Foundation, and is a part-owner of the First Monday journal. She is now an occasional writer for Arianna Huffington's online Huffington Post. She has also been a board member or early investor in tech startups, among them Flickr, PowerSet.com, Medscape, and Medstory.

[edit] Impact on Computer Industry

Dyson from the early days admired Bill Gates. She is quoted in Wired as saying: "I might have been more mainstream if I were a guy; I might have wanted to be Bill Gates. "[1] Dyson's influence could be vastly detrimental to anyone in Gates' way in the 80s and early 90s. Gates returned the compliment many times by helping promote Dyson's endeavours. After Dyson said that "every software person wants to be Bill Gates", Larry Ellison is quoted as saying: "I really don't get Esther?". Some people say that Dyson played a crucial political "King Maker" role that was far from neutral. For example, in the copyright and patent litigation between Jim Manzi and Borland, Dyson sided for Manzi although the Lotus position was detrimental to innovation. Borland won that case in the Supreme Court, a landmark case for high-tech IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). Generally recognized as smart, Dyson tends to take positions with her close entourage. Her impact on the computer industry has been significant and many would say biased. In her first conferences, Dyson sided with Gates against Open Source. It took Dyson several years and the successful momentum of Open Source to have her support the new industry trend.