Esther Dyson - Conversation on Social Networks

On Monday, May 3rd Esther Dyson will lead a conversation on Social Networks after lunch at MeshForum.

Editor-at-large at CNET Networks, host of the influential PC Forum, and founding chairwoman of ICANN, the international agency charged with setting policy for the Internet's core infrastructure, Esther Dyson has devoted her life to discovering the inevitable and promoting the possible. For more than 25 years, Esther has edited Release 1.0, a monthly report covering the worlds of technology, communications and the Internet. Esther chairs EDventure Holdings, an information services and investment company that she sold to CNET Networks in early 2004. She remains an active investor and player in strategic discussions and global policy-making concerning the Internet and its impact on society.

At Release 1.0 and in her private investment activities, Dyson focuses on emerging technologies, emerging companies and emerging markets. Among the topics she has covered for Release 1.0 recently are social software and social networks, registries of people and things, the Internet, the transformation of e-mail to "Meta-mail," identity management, and the use of "consumer" Internet services such as Yahoo! eBay and Google by small businesses.

By 1994, she had already explored the impact of the Net on intellectual property (among other things, why many software products are now turning into online services). In 1997, she wrote a book on the impact of the Net on individuals' lives, "Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age." It includes a number of chapters about today's hot topics such as security, privacy, anonymity and intellectual property.

Dyson is also an active player in discussions and policy-making concerning the Internet and society. From 1998 to 2000, she was founding chairman of ICANN (the organization responsible for overseeing the Domain Name System). A variety of government officials worldwide turn to her for advice on Internet policy issues.

In addition, she donates time and money as a trustee to emerging organizations (Bridges.org, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Eurasia Foundation). For several years in the '90s she was chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

After graduating from Harvard in economics, Dyson began her serious career in 1974 as a fact-checker for Forbes 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. The daughter of an English physicist and a Swiss mathematician, Dyson started traveling in Eastern Europe in 1989 and eventually helped to fill the small but vital vacuum at the intersection of Eastern Europe, high-tech and venture capital, even as she remains active in the US and Western Europe.

You can follow Esther's travels via her Flickr photoblog or the "Where's Esther" page at Release 1.0.