Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson has devoted her life to discovering the inevitable and promoting the possible. As an investor/commentator, she focuses on emerging technologies and business models, emerging markets and emerging companies. In 1994, she was one of the first to explore the impact of the Net on intellectual property in her own (paid-subscription) newsletter Release 1.0 and in Wired. 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. Dyson does business as chairman of EDventure Holdings, the reclaimed name of the company she sold to CNET in 2004. She spends most of her time interfering with the companies listed below, most of them start-ups. In addition, she donates time and money as a trustee to emerging organizations (the Santa Fe Institute, the Sunlight Foundation, StopBadware.org and the Eurasia Foundation). From 1998 to 2000, she was founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the international agency charged with setting policy for the Internet's core infrastructure (technical standards and the Domain Name System) independent of government control. She also sits on the Russian government's commission to establish a Russian Silicon Valley, to which she contributes both enthusiasm and skepticism.