John Gage
Encyclopedia
John Burdette Gage was the 21st employee of Sun Microsystems
, where he is credited with creating the phrase "the network is the computer." He served as Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun, until leaving on June 9, 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner to work on green technologies for global warming
; he departed KPCB in 2010 to apply what he had learned "to broader issues in other parts of the world". He is also best known as one of the co-founders of NetDay
in 1995.
in 1975 from the University of California, Berkeley
. He also attended the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard Business School
. While at Berkeley, he was a three-time All-American swimmer. He was a leader in the anti-war movement and was a delegate for Robert Kennedy in 1968 for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, representing Berkeley and Alameda County, California. He co-chaired the Robert Kennedy campaign in Alameda County. Gage had worked at Berkeley with Bill Joy
, the person largely responsible for the authorship of Berkeley UNIX
, also known as BSD
, from which springs many modern forms of UNIX, including Solaris, FreeBSD
, NetBSD
, and OpenBSD
. Gage joined Sun Microsystems
in 1982 with Bill Joy
and others.
In 1968, and again in 1970, he was a co-organizer of Vietnam Moratorium, anti-Vietnam War events in Boston and Washington, DC. In November, 1969, he produced the final show of the Rolling Stones 1969 tour, the Palm Beach International Music and Arts Festival, with Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, ShaNaNa, Jefferson Airplane, Wavy Gravy, and a cast of thousands. He co-produced the August 6, 1970 12-hour Festival for Peace in Shea Stadium, New York, with Peter Yarrow, Creedence Clearwater, Janis Joplin, Dionne Warwick, Johnny Winter, Miles Davis, Poco, Sha-Na-Na, Steppenwolf, Richie Havens, PG&E, John Sebastian, the Staple Singers, Joan Baez, the lighting and staging of Peter Fields and the sound systems of Bill Hanley. Bill Graham's Fillmore East provided on-stage support, along with the Hog Farm.
In April, 2002, Gage joined the Markle Taskforce on National Security in the Information Age, whose two reports explore how federal, state and local governments collect, analyze and use information as it relates to national security and homeland defense. Their two reports, when joined with the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the WMD Commission Report, formed the foundation for the 2004-2005 reforms of the intelligence and homeland security communities.
In June, 2008, Gage retired from Sun Microsystems and joined Kleiner Perkins as a venture capitalist along with Al Gore
.
He left Kleiner Perkins in 2010.
Gage is perhaps also best known as one of the founders of NetDay
in 1995 with Michael Kaufman. NetDay "called on high-tech companies to commit resources to schools, libraries, and clinics worldwide so that they could connect to the Internet." It was endorsed by President Bill Clinton
and Vice President Al Gore
who were active participants in NetDay'96. In 1998, Gage was awarded the ACM Presidential Award by Chuck House, the President of the ACM
for his work on NetDay
.
Gage has served on scientific advisory panels for the US National Research Council and the US National Academy of Sciences. Most recently, he served on the National Academy Committee on Scientific Communication and National Security, issuing the report "Beyond Fortress America: National Security Controls on Science and Technology in a Globalized World" in 2009. He served on the Markle Task Force on National Security, whose reports helped in reorganizing US intelligence agencies. He has also been a member of the Board of Regents of the US National Library of Medicine, the Board of Trustees of Fermi National Laboratory, the External Advisory Council for the World Bank, and the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC). He serves on the United Nations Task Force on Digital Health, the Advisory Board of the World-Wide Web Foundation, and the advisory board of the University of Oxford Martin School.
He is on the Board of the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation in Nairobi, working to bring peace and economic development to the nomadic tribes of the Rift Valley of Kenya, on the board of Relief International, an international humanitarian agency, and on the Malaysian Multimedia Corridor International Advisory Panel.
In 1995, Gage created NetDay, a volunteer project to bring the resources of high technology companies to schools and libraries to connect them to the Internet. Since then, over 500,000 volunteers have wired over 50,000 schools and libraries in the United States.
In 1999, President Clinton appointed Gage to the Web-Based Education Commission, which issued its report December, 2000. The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government named Gage as one of five distinguished journalists and scholars to be a 2000 Fall Fellow. He taught a course on technology, media, and governance during the Harvard Kennedy School fall semester of 2000.
Gage attended the University of California, Berkeley, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He did his doctoral work in mathematics and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and left Berkeley in 1982 to join Bill Joy as one of the original employees of Sun Microsystems. He is a member of the Mathematical Association of America, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, where he is credited with creating the phrase "the network is the computer." He served as Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun, until leaving on June 9, 2008 to join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner to work on green technologies for global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
; he departed KPCB in 2010 to apply what he had learned "to broader issues in other parts of the world". He is also best known as one of the co-founders of NetDay
NetDay
NetDay was an event established in 1995 that "called on high-tech companies to commit resources to schools, libraries, and clinics worldwide so that they could connect to the Internet". It was developed by John Gage and activist Michael Kaufman...
in 1995.
Background
Gage received his bachelor's degreeBachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in 1975 from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He also attended the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
. While at Berkeley, he was a three-time All-American swimmer. He was a leader in the anti-war movement and was a delegate for Robert Kennedy in 1968 for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, representing Berkeley and Alameda County, California. He co-chaired the Robert Kennedy campaign in Alameda County. Gage had worked at Berkeley with Bill Joy
Bill Joy
William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...
, the person largely responsible for the authorship of Berkeley UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, also known as BSD
Berkeley Software Distribution
Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
, from which springs many modern forms of UNIX, including Solaris, FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...
, and OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution , a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995...
. Gage joined Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
in 1982 with Bill Joy
Bill Joy
William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...
and others.
In 1968, and again in 1970, he was a co-organizer of Vietnam Moratorium, anti-Vietnam War events in Boston and Washington, DC. In November, 1969, he produced the final show of the Rolling Stones 1969 tour, the Palm Beach International Music and Arts Festival, with Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, ShaNaNa, Jefferson Airplane, Wavy Gravy, and a cast of thousands. He co-produced the August 6, 1970 12-hour Festival for Peace in Shea Stadium, New York, with Peter Yarrow, Creedence Clearwater, Janis Joplin, Dionne Warwick, Johnny Winter, Miles Davis, Poco, Sha-Na-Na, Steppenwolf, Richie Havens, PG&E, John Sebastian, the Staple Singers, Joan Baez, the lighting and staging of Peter Fields and the sound systems of Bill Hanley. Bill Graham's Fillmore East provided on-stage support, along with the Hog Farm.
In April, 2002, Gage joined the Markle Taskforce on National Security in the Information Age, whose two reports explore how federal, state and local governments collect, analyze and use information as it relates to national security and homeland defense. Their two reports, when joined with the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the WMD Commission Report, formed the foundation for the 2004-2005 reforms of the intelligence and homeland security communities.
In June, 2008, Gage retired from Sun Microsystems and joined Kleiner Perkins as a venture capitalist along with Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
.
He left Kleiner Perkins in 2010.
NetDay
NetDay
NetDay was an event established in 1995 that "called on high-tech companies to commit resources to schools, libraries, and clinics worldwide so that they could connect to the Internet". It was developed by John Gage and activist Michael Kaufman...
in 1995 with Michael Kaufman. NetDay "called on high-tech companies to commit resources to schools, libraries, and clinics worldwide so that they could connect to the Internet." It was endorsed by President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and Vice President Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
who were active participants in NetDay'96. In 1998, Gage was awarded the ACM Presidential Award by Chuck House, the President of the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
for his work on NetDay
NetDay
NetDay was an event established in 1995 that "called on high-tech companies to commit resources to schools, libraries, and clinics worldwide so that they could connect to the Internet". It was developed by John Gage and activist Michael Kaufman...
.
Capsule biography
Gage was previously the Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems, Inc, and was partner in the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he provided counsel to the firm’s global network of entrepreneurs, scientists, academics, and government leaders.Gage has served on scientific advisory panels for the US National Research Council and the US National Academy of Sciences. Most recently, he served on the National Academy Committee on Scientific Communication and National Security, issuing the report "Beyond Fortress America: National Security Controls on Science and Technology in a Globalized World" in 2009. He served on the Markle Task Force on National Security, whose reports helped in reorganizing US intelligence agencies. He has also been a member of the Board of Regents of the US National Library of Medicine, the Board of Trustees of Fermi National Laboratory, the External Advisory Council for the World Bank, and the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC). He serves on the United Nations Task Force on Digital Health, the Advisory Board of the World-Wide Web Foundation, and the advisory board of the University of Oxford Martin School.
He is on the Board of the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation in Nairobi, working to bring peace and economic development to the nomadic tribes of the Rift Valley of Kenya, on the board of Relief International, an international humanitarian agency, and on the Malaysian Multimedia Corridor International Advisory Panel.
In 1995, Gage created NetDay, a volunteer project to bring the resources of high technology companies to schools and libraries to connect them to the Internet. Since then, over 500,000 volunteers have wired over 50,000 schools and libraries in the United States.
In 1999, President Clinton appointed Gage to the Web-Based Education Commission, which issued its report December, 2000. The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government named Gage as one of five distinguished journalists and scholars to be a 2000 Fall Fellow. He taught a course on technology, media, and governance during the Harvard Kennedy School fall semester of 2000.
Gage attended the University of California, Berkeley, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He did his doctoral work in mathematics and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and left Berkeley in 1982 to join Bill Joy as one of the original employees of Sun Microsystems. He is a member of the Mathematical Association of America, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Publications
- Information Technology and Economic Development, in Economic Development, Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1999.
External links
- Official website, last entry dated 2008
- Smithsonian Institution Leadership Award Oral History, 29 March 1999
- John Gage interviewed in documentary film Berkeley in the Sixties
- Video Interview with John Gage, Association for Computing MachineryAssociation for Computing MachineryThe Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
- Power to the People: Why is John Gage, a bearded old Berkeley troublemaker, carrying the corporate flag for the Pentagon's favorite computer maker?, WiredWired (magazine)Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...