PRESENT TECHONOMISTS
The higher techonomic metabolism of today is the net effect of the growing multitude of techonomists in our midst. Techonomic advances are popping up across the entire spectrum of human endeavor, and one of the characteristics of today’s innovations is that so many of them happen in parallel. Today’s techonomists are synthesizers and combiners, creating new technologies that are greater than the sum of their components, whether it be a new drug therapy, a mobile communicator, or water purifier for the outback. These are living techonomists – many of them will attend Techonomy 2010 – all with long track records of accomplishment.
Craig McCaw (b. 1949)
Applying lessons learned – some the hard way – from his family’s forays into the early cable television business, McCaw is best known as a key pioneer in the U.S. cellular telephone industry. After his family’s cable business all but went broke in the late 1960s, he methodically built it back up by acquiring a patchwork of local cable companies in remote locations and turning them into a very profitable conglomerate. He used a similar strategy to buy up a patchwork of local cellular licenses in the 1980s that he transformed into one of the first national cellular networks before the traditional landline telephone network operators knew what hit them. In 1994, he and his brother sold McCaw Cellular to the original AT&T for $11.5 billion. Ironically, that network, which first was renamed Cingular, is the core of what it now once again called AT&T.
McCaw’s techonomic strategy was simple: To provide network services for cable, cellular service, and broadband internet access in places overlooked by the more metropolitan-oriented carriers, and then to stitch them into a network that has its own economies of scale. Although he has failed in a few conspicuous instances – his ambitious plan called Teledesic to establish a network of satellites to provide global broadband services never panned out. But he’s back at it again, building networks in 80 U.S. markets to provide a wireless broadband alternative to the cellular phone networks called Clearwire. Once a techonomist, always a techonomist.
Craig Venter (b. 1946)
Former California surfer dude turned visionary genomics pioneer, Venter is best known for mounting a controversial, privately-funded effort to decode the human genome at Celera Genomics before an international, government-backed team of scientists pulled off the feat—the bitterly-contested race ended in a tie in 2000. But Venter was just getting warmed up when he turned the human genome project into a world-renowned brawl. After being forced out of Celera in 2002, he went on to start a nonprofit foundation whose pursuits have included generating bacteria from scratch by constructing synthetic genomes and placing them in cells—such man-made microbes might be harnessed to make everything from biofuels to drugs—and decoding the genomes of entire ecosystems of microorganisms that Venter lifted from the world’s oceans while circumnavigating the globe in his 95-foot yacht, the Sorcerer II.
Confirming the commercial promise of Venter’s outsized dreams, ExxonMobil announced in July 2009 that it would invest $600 million in a joint venture with a company he formed, Synthetic Genomics, to develop new fuels from bioengineered algae that could greatly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. After arguably mapping out more of the living world than any scientist in history, Venter is now aiming to lead the way in keeping it intact.
Bill Gates (b. 1955)
Gates is best known today as the founder of Microsoft and as the world’s richest man. However, he will likely be remembered more for his techonomic innovations that unleashed the phenomenal growth of the personal computer industry. Early on he recognized that software is to computers as razor blades are to razors – and that software should be thought of as a separate product and technology that was valuable in its own right, rather than as something that was thrown with the computer for free. His second great techonomic epiphany was that software operating systems for computers could be standardized, thus making it much easier for Microsoft and software companies to develop programs that customize computers for particular use. And his third great realization was that this software compatibility model would work not just for personal computers but for machines of all types. Software turned out to be one of the great techonomic multipliers of the time.
Now, as primarily a philanthropist, Gates is trying to find similar techonomic multipliers that will help eradicate disease, improve agriculture, and make American schools better.
Arthur Rock (b. 1926)
When Rock was still a young securities analyst in New York in 1957, he got wind of eight disgruntled PhDs from Palo Alto, California, who wanted to move en masse away from their obstreperous boss, Nobel Laureate William Shockley. Ideally, they wanted to start their own semiconductor company. Problem was, they didn’t have any money. In stepped Rock, who, suggested that they pool their modest resources – roughly $500 each — and he would find an established company to pay them $1.5 million to buy a 20% stake in the new enterprise. He even coined a term for the concept – venture capital.
After being turned down 34 times, Rock found an investor, and Fairchild Semiconductor, a company whose founders would go on to spawn Intel, and the legendary venture capital firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Rock also found seed money for Apple computer, Teledyne, SDS and many other startups that dotted the orchards and pruneyards rimming San Francisco Bay. His great techonomic innovation turned out to be the DNA of Silicon Valley.
Tim Berners-Lee (b. 1955)
As is often the case with techonomists, Berners-Lee invented what would come to be called the World Wide Web – a way to use the Internet to transmit multimedia content and employ hypertext links between documents – because he wanted to use the innovation himself. In 1989, the self-effacing English physicist who now teaches at MIT, first proposed creating a rudimentary programming “language” for building web “pages” that made it easy to annotate a document with references to other sources of information that were just a mouse click away. He and a colleague finished the initial software coding in 1990, and the following year the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) “posted” the very first rudimentary “web-page.” A replica of that first “site” can be found here.
Berners-Lee never tried to turn his innovation into a business. But it was so compelling that it provided a platform for entrepreneurs to create an entirely new digital media industry that has had profound and often devastating effects upon previous print media models as well as the recorded music industry and even television broadcasting. It is a techonomic multiplier of historic proportions.