Esther Dyson (born 14 July, 1951, Zürich, Switzerland) is a journalist and commentator on emerging digital technology, a founding member of the digerati, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]} On October 7, 2008, Space Adventures announced that she would train as a backup commercial astronaut for Charles Simonyi, for the Soyuz TMA-14 mission in 2009.

Life

Esther Dyson is the daughter of physicist Freeman Dyson and mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, and sister to digital technology historian George Dyson.^[8] 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,"^[2] 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 when CNET declined to continue her PC Forum conference.^[9]

Publications and business ventures

Dyson said, "I'm flying!", 2007 courtesy Zero-G

Dyson in 2007

Previously, Dyson and her company EDventure specialized 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 edited the others. When she left CNET, the newsletter was picked up by O'Reilly Media, which appointed Jimmy Guterman to edit it and renamed the newsletter Release 2.0.
• Release 2.0, her 1997 book on how the Internet affects 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 (now defunct).
• Release 4.0, her weblog. On March 4, 2005, that weblog moved to Dyson's Flickr account.^[10]

Dyson is an adviser to the First Monday journal, and an occasional contributor to Arianna Huffington's online Huffington Post as Release 0.9.

Dyson has also been a board member or early investor in several tech startups, among them Flickr, del.icio.us, Eventful, Netbeans, Powerset, Systinet, ZEDO, CV-Online, Medscape, and Medstory.

As of early 2007, Dyson describes herself as "spending more and more time on private aviation and commercial space startups."^[11] and also in health care and genetics. She has invested in XCOR, Constellation Services, Zero-G, Icon Aircraft, and Space Adventures. Since 2005, she has hosted the Flight School conference in Aspen. She is currently on the board of directors of 23andMe, and is one of the first ten volunteers in the Personal Genome Project.

Philanthropy

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.^[2] 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 a trustee of the Santa Fe Institute.

References

External links

• EDventure.com
• Flight School '08
• Release 1.0 website (now redirects to O'Reilly Radar Release 2.0).
• Release 1.0 back issues (via O'Reilly Radar).
• Dyson, Esther, "You've Got Goodmail," New York Times, March 17, 2006.
• "New Horizons for the Intrepid VC," Wall Street Journal, .
• Esther Dyson's writings in the Huffington Post.
• Interviewed by Charlie Rose, August 14, 2007.
• Interviewed by Virginia Postrel in Reason, October 1996.
• The Long Now Foundation.
• Future events in which Esther Dyson is participating.
• BT Big Thinkers. Esther discusses business challenges with thought leaders.
• Borsook, Paulina, Release: "Some have called Esther Dyson the most powerful woman in computing. But is her fascination with Eastern Europe leading to eclipse on her home turf?" Wired, November 1993.
• Dyson, Esther, Intellectual Value "A radical new way of looking at compensation for owners and creators in the Net-based economy," Wired, July 1995.
• "Space Travel and Social Media" Talking Portraits interview with Esther Dyson by Tom Parish.
• Interview with Esther Dyson On Invincibelle

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