OHI project interviewed Esther Dyson on 15th September 2019 in New York.
Esther Dyson was known as “the first lady of cyberspace” and “the most influential female in the PC field”. We, as one of the elder IT generation, have read and listened to her words and opinions for 20 years, even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have been her loyal readers.
Take a look at the praise that people made for her in those days,
John Markoff, the first science and technology reporter of The New York Times, commented, ‘Esther is the First Lady of Cyberspace. She has also earned the right to be called “the First Lady of Personal Computing” and before that “the First Lady of the Semiconductor Industry”. There's a homeless quality about her that I've never been able to define; she can't really find her niche. She's had the ability to stay outside the groove of the industry. She's always been one standard deviation off, which is foresighted.’
Kevin Kelly said, ‘I am in awe of Esther. Her brilliance is almost intimidating, and she has the unusual and enviable knack of being able to absorb very complex, complicated technical information and cut right through it. I rely on Esther to tell me what's real and what's hype. She's the best B.S. filter I know because she understands it. Unlike most of us, she actually knows what's going on.’
Esther Dyson is very busy who spends most of her time doing business trips around the world and seldom lives in New York where she is based. For her, there is no day off, every day is working day, she is accustomed to such a busy work pace and her secret to keeping active is swimming every morning.
Last year, we did the first interview with her in a hotel in San Francisco. This time, we made an appointment for the second interview with her in her office in New York on Sunday, September 15th. The day before our interview, she just came back from a business trip even though she was under weekends, she would fly to Michigan after our interview. What a tight schedule! This time, we would like to listen to her stories of the initial development of ICANN since she was undoubtedly the core figure of this process.
In ICANN, Esther Dyson served as Chairman of the board (1998-2000) and one of the 9 founding board members. She is a highly respected person in ICANN and witnessed the initial development of ICANN as well as the trade-offs and games between ICANN and other major stakeholders such as governments, companies and the ITU.
However, during the recent ten years, she has turned her focus into the health industry and faded out of the mainstream of IT industry. And she becomes a famous angel investor and serves as Chairman of the board of EDventure Holdings.
Due to the time limit, we could only listen to a part of her stories, we hope to discover more next time.
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