Three and a Half Different Biographies

Here are three biographies for Brad Templeton, for use by press and in conference materials, at three different lengths depending on how much you need.

Tweet (almost)

Brad Templeton was chair for computing at Singularity U, Chairman Emeritus and Futurist at the EFF, and founded ClariNet, the world's first dot-com. He has advised on robocars and mobility for many leading players, including Waymo, and speaks globaly on the topics of the future of technolgy and transportation.

Stage Intro

You can use forms of the others, or this works OK:

"Brad Templeton founded the world's first dot-com back in 1989. Today he's Chairman Emeritus and Futurist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Founding faculty and computing chair at Singularity University, and writes, consults and speaks on the future of self-driving cars, transportation and cities through his site robocars.com"

Micro

Brad Templeton is founding faculty for Computing & Networks at Singularity University, and Chairman Emeritus and futurist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading cyberspace civil rights foundation. He is a fellow and former board member of the Foresight Institute He also advised Google's team developing self-driving cars, and writes about such cars at robocars.com and Forbes.com. He advises or advised companies like Starship Delivery Robots, Quanergy LIDAR and many others. He founded ClariNet Communications Corp (the world's first "dot-com" company.) He also created rec.humor.funny, and its web site, www.netfunny.com, the world's longest running blog.

Medium

Brad Templeton founded ClariNet Communications Corp., the first internet-based content company. (Sold to Individual Inc/Newsedge Corp.) ClariNet published an online electronic newspaper delivered for live reading on subscribers machines. He has been active in the internet community since 1979, participated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days and in 1987 he founded and edited rec.humor.funny, the world's most widely read computerized conference on that network, and today the world's longest running blog, and declared by the BBC as the first subject of an internet cancel campaign. He has founded 2 software companies and is the author of a dozen software packages.

He is Chairman Emeritus of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading civil rights advocacy group for cyberspace. He is founding computing faculty at Singularity University, a new school of rapidly changing technology, and was chair for computing starting in 2010. He writes and researches the future of automated transportation at Robocars.com and Forbes.com and worked for two years on Google's team building these cars, now Waymo. He is a fellow and former board member of the Foresight Institute (A nonprofit Nanotech/Futurist think-tank) and technical advisor to Starship Technologies (Delivery Robots), Deepen.AI (AI Tools), Tilt5 (AR) and others. He is also a well known photographer and artist at Burning Man, and a popular speaker at international events on cars, online rights and other topics.

Self-Driving Cars sub-bio

(For use when describing my role primarily in self-driving car tech)

Moving from a prior career involving authorship of a dozen software packages, founding the world's first dot-com, and chairing the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Brad Templeton entered the self-driving car space in 2007. His web site and blog at robocars.com is the oldest and most popular site on the topic. He worked on Google's self-driving car team in its early years, and has consulted for some of the world's largest automakers and investors. He advised many of the leading startups, including unicorns Quanergy, Zoox, Cruise and Otto, and works today with Starship Technologies on delivery robots, scooter startup Rollo, Minimobility startup Nimbus and others.

Long

Brad Templeton was founder, publisher and software architect at ClariNet Communications Corp., the #1 internet-based electronic newspaper publisher, until selling it to Newsedge Corporation. in 1997. ClariNet gathers information from a variety of sources including major newswires such as UPI and the AP and edits it into a constantly updated package that is sent to subscriber's computers over the internet, to be read on their own machines. It was the first company formed to provide services over the Internet. He has been active in the computer network community since 1979, particpated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days -- including being one of the first to set up an international link -- and in 1987 he founded and edited a special edited USENET conference devoted to comedy. This newsgroup, named "rec.humor.funny" became the most widely read computerized conference in the world, demonstrating the popularity and marketability of edited information. It now also exists on the web site www.netfunny.com and qualifies as the longest running blog today.

He is a founding faculty member at Singularity University, a multi-disciplanary school that teaches about how rapidly changing technologies will affect the world. He was chair for computing from 2010-2017.

He also writes and researches the future of automated transportation at Robocars.com. He spent 2 years advising Google's self-driving car team focusing on strategy and future technologies.

He is a regular speaker at conferences around the world, having given talks in 20 countries on topics such as self-driving cars, privacy, computer freedom, Bitcoin and many other topics. He is actively researching how to combine telephony and Presence.

Templeton was the first employee of Personal Software/Visicorp, which was the first major microcomputer applications software company. He is also the author of a dozen packaged microcomputer software products, including VisiPlot for the IBM-PC, the compressor in Stuffit -- the world's most widely used Macintosh application, various games, popular tools and utilities for Commodore computers, special Pascal and Basic programming environments (ALICE) designed for education, an add-in spreadsheet compiler (3-2-1 Blastoff) for Lotus 1-2-3 (picked by PC World as one of the top software products of 1987) and various network related software tools. Most of this was done through Looking Glass Software Limited, a software company he owned and operated from 1983 to 1991.

Templeton also published in 1993 a CD-ROM containing the largest anthology of current fiction made to date. ClariNet's experiment in electronic books gathered all the material nominated for Science Fiction's top awards in one place, in time for award voters to use it as a resource.

He is Chairman Emeritus and futurist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a longtime writer on cyberspace issues. The EFF, founded in 1990 is devoted to civil rights online, in particular free speech and encryption rights. He served as chairman of the EFF from 2000 to 2010 and on its board for almost 20 years.

He is a fellow of the futurist Foresight Nanotech Institute, the premier advocacy group and think-tank for issues relating to Molecular Nanotechnology, and served on its board for 20 years. He also was sofwtare design advisor and board member of BitTorrent, Inc., the corporation founded to commercialize the world's most popular P2P large-file publishing software, and a former member of its board of directors. He also advises other startups such as Starship Technologies (Delivery Robots), Deepen.AI, and Nimbus.Green. He is also a well known photographer and artist at Burning Man, and

Via ClariNet, He was a plaintiff in the case to get the USA's Communications Decency Act successfully overturned in the supreme court.

His biggest hobby is fine-art panoramic landscape photography. For this, and other projects, he is a popular artist at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada.

He was born in 1960, grew up near Toronto and now lives in Silicon Valley in California. He holds a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo. Full information can be found at his web site.

Photos

Usually he's behind the camera, but This shot can be used in media reports and publicity for events I am appearing at.