Digerati

The digerati are the gers are included among the digerati.

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

*Opinion leaders who, through their writings, promoted a vision of digital technology and the Internet as a transformational element in society; *People regarded as celebrities within the Silicon Valley computer subculture, particularly during the Dot-com boom years; *Anyone regarded as influential within the digital technology community.

The first mention of the word Digerati on USENET occurred in 1992, and referred to an article by George Gilder in Upside magazine. Some sources say that the term (language) was coined by New York Times editor Tim Race.

=Members of the digerati=

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:

==Free software visionaries==

Richard Stallman

Linus Torvalds

==EFF/WELL==

Mike Godwin (The Defender) Counsel, EFF

David R. Johnson (The Judge) chairman of Counsel Connect, codirector of the Cyberspace Law Institute.

John Perry Barlow (The Coyote) -- cofounder, EFF, ex-lyricist, Grateful Dead

Howard Rheingold (The Citizen) was the editor of Whole Earth Review and the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, coined Smart mob , involved with the WELL

Stewart Brand (The Scout) founder Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder, WELL

Cory Doctorow European Outreach Coordinator, EFF, science fiction Author, weblog

==Publishers==

Stewart Alsop (The Pragmatist) -- Former editor-in-chief, InfoWorld

David Bunnell (The Seer) founder of PC Magazine, PC World, MacWorld, Personal Computing, and New Media

Kevin Kelly (The Saint) executive editor of Wired magazine

Jane Metcalfe (The Publisher) president and cofounder of Wired Magazine Ventures. She is also a board member emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Louis Rossetto (The Buccaneer) editor and publisher of Wired Magazine and HotWired, and cofounder and CEO of Wired Ventures, Inc.

==Authors/Columnists==

John Brockman (The Connector) -- author, editor.

John C. Dvorak (The Gadfly) technology columnist

Esther Dyson (The Pattern-Recognizer) writer, founding chairman of ICANN

Denise Caruso (The Idealist) runs Spotlight conference, New York Times columnist

John Markoff (The Scribe) NYT tech journalist, author, widely scorned by the hacker underground for embellishing his stories on Kevin Mitnick

Jerry Michalski (The Pilgrim) managing editor of Release 1.0, the newsletter published, and originally written and edited solely by Esther Dyson.

==Executives==

Charles Simonyi, oversaw the development of Word and Excel at Microsoft

Ted Leonsis (The Marketer) President, AOL

Steve Case (The Statesman) founder and CEO of America Online

Greg Clark (The Physicist) President, News Technology Group, News Corporation.

John Doerr (The Matchmaker) Venture Capitalist, microprocessor

Bill Gates (The Software Developer) founder, Microsoft

Steve Jobs (The Alternate Software Developer) founder, Apple

Doug Carlston (The Thinker) cofounder, Brøderbund Software

Scott McNealy (The Competitor) cofounder and CEO of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Nathan Myhrvold (The Chef) chief technology officer at Microsoft

Doug Rowan (The Curator) president and CEO of Corbis

Linda Stone (The Catalyst) was the Director of the Virtual Worlds Group in the Microsoft Advanced Technology and Research Division

==Academics==

Nicholas Negroponte, computer scientist, founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology s Media Lab

David Gelernter (The Conservative) , professor, Yale University

Cliff Stoll (The Skeptic) astrophysicist and the author of Silicon Snake Oil (1995)

Sherry Turkle, (The Cyberanalyst) Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, studied people s relationship with computers

==Miscellaneous==

Daniel W. Hillis (The Genius) vice president of research and development at the Walt Disney Company, cofounder/chief scientist, Think Machines Corporation

Brewster Kahle (The Searcher) inventor and founder of Wide Area Information Servers Inc.,

Jaron Lanier (The Prodigy) writer, musician, artist, virtual reality developer

Stewart McBride (The Maestro) Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of United Digital Artists

John McCrea (The Force) manager of Cosmo, Silicon Graphics s next-generation Web software product line.

Kip Parent (The Webmaster) founder of Pantheon Interactive and is former electronic sales manager of Silicon Graphics.

Paul Saffo (The Oracle) director of the Institute for the Future

Bob Stein (The Radical) founder of the Voyager Company (CDROM)

Lew Tucker (The Evangelist) former director of Advanced Development at Thinking Machines Corporation and is the director of JavaSoft s Corporate and ISV Relations for Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Dave Winer (The Lover) software and Weblog pioneer

Richard Saul Wurman (The Impresario) chairman and creative director of the TED conferences. He is also an architect, a cartographer, the creator of the Access Travel Guide Series

*Stewart Alsop *George Gilder *Nathan Myhrvold *Kevin Mitnick – the first publicly documented cracker (criminal hacker), widely a person of interest among the computer underground for being held without bail for nearly 2 years before being prosecuted in court.

=References=

Digerati: Encounters With the Cyber Elite by John Brockman, Hardcover: 354 pages Publisher: Hardwired; 1st ed edition (October 1, 1996) ISBN 1888869046

=External links=

*[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/digerati.html Digerati talk on costs and benefits of the Internet] Coinage attributed to Tim Race *[http://www.edge.org/digerati/ Who are the Digerati]