Digerati

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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 ([1], 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:

  • 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.

Contents

[edit] 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. Some sources say that the term was coined by New York Times editor Tim Race in a 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.

[edit] 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:

[edit] Free/Open software visionaries

[edit] EFF/WELL

[edit] Publishers

[edit] Authors/Columnists

[edit] Executives

[edit] Academics

[edit] Miscellaneous

  • W. Daniel Hillis (The Genius) vice president of research and development at the Walt Disney Company, cofounder/chief scientist, Thinking 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 blogging 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
  • George Gilder
  • 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.

[edit] Connotations in Romanian

For Romanian speakers the term is somewhat unfortunate, as in that language the word means 'the digested ones'.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY; Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute - New York Times". http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4DE103EF93AA15752C0A964958260. 
  • Digerati: Encounters With the Cyber Elite by John Brockman, Hardcover: 354 pages Publisher: Hardwired; 1st ed edition (October 1, 1996) ISBN 1-888869-04-6

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digerati"
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