Digerati

The digerati (or digiterati) are the elite of the computer industry and online communities. The word is a portmanteau, derived from "digital" and "literati", and reminiscent of the earlier coinage glitterati (glitter + literati). Famous computer scientists, tech magazine writers and well-known bloggers are included among the digerati.

The word is used in several related but different ways. It can mean:

Contents

Term history

The first mention of the word Digerati on USENET occurred in 1992, and referred to an article by George Gilder in Upside magazine. According to the March 1, 1992 "On Language" column by William Safire in the New York Times Magazine, the term was coined by New York Times editor Tim Race in a January 1992 New York Times article.[1] In Race's words:

Actually the first use of "digerati" was in a Jan. 29, 1992 New York Times article, "Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute", by John Markoff, into which I edited the term. The article was about a controversy engendered by a George Gilder article that had recently appeared in Upside magazine. In a March 1, 1992 "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine, William Safire noted the coinage and gave me the honor of defining it, which we did like so:
Digerati, n.pl. -- people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks.

Members

Some people who have been named as members of the digerati, particularly in the first sense of the word, with their title in John Brockman's Digerati: Encounters With the Cyber Elite (1996) in parentheses when they have one, include:

EFF/WELL

Publishers

Authors and columnists

Executives

Academics

Developers

ARPANET/Internet

Miscellaneous

References

  1. ^ Markoff, John (January 29, 1992). "BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY; Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute - New York Times". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4DE103EF93AA15752C0A964958260. Retrieved May 1, 2010. 

External links