The Matrix: @davidsol

All About Me

This area is subject to constant alteration, expansion, compression or deletion, depending on my mood and whatever revisionist streak appeals to me at the moment.

David Bennahum is a 1990 graduate, magna cum laude, of Harvard College with a degree in History and Literature. As a writer living in New York, he explores and explains the cultural, economic and political consequences brought on by cyberspace. David is a Contributing Editor at Wired, Spin, Lingua Franca, and I.D. His articles apprear in the New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, New York, The Economist, Marketing Computers, Slate, Feed and NetGuide. In 1996 and 1997, David moderated the I.D. Magazine Interactive Media Review, recognized as the world's most prestigious interactive media design competition. A library of published articles can be found here. In August 1995, David started MEME, a bi-weekly newsletter distributed on the Internet. MEME currently has 20,000 readers.
David is writing a book about what it was like to grow up with computers, and be part of the first generation of kids to program and play video games, titled Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace to be published by Basic Books in Fall 1998. David is a dual-national (French-American), and lived in Paris for six years. His first computer was an Atari 800, which he acquired at the age of twelve as a video-game machine.
BOOKS IN PRINT
In Their Own Words: The Beatles After the BreakUp, Omnibus Press (UK), 1991.
k.d. lang, Omnibus Press (UK), 1994.
In Her Own Words: k.d. lang, Omnibus Press (UK), 1995.

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
Speaker, The World Wide Web : the design and architecture of information, School of Visual Arts, New York City, February 23, 1995.
Speaker, Visions of the Year 2020: the digital revolution, Tufts University EPIIC Symposium, Cambridge, Mass., March 3-5, 1995.
Speaker, Electronic Communications and The Future of the Postal System, National Association of Letter Carriers, Hershey PA, June 21-22, 1995.

INTERVIEWS (TELEVISION & RADIO)
Featured Guest, Afternoon Magazine, WILL radio (National Public Radio affiliate), Chicago area, February 16, 1995. Subject: "What is cyberspace."
Featured Guest, America is Talking, CNBC-TV, nationally syndicated talk-show, June 1, 1995. Subject: "Children accessing pornography on-line."
Featured Guest, MTV News, MTV, aired week of July 31, 1995. Subject: Adolescents and pornography distrubuted over computer networks.
Featured Guest, WorldNet TV, November 14, 1995, broadcast by the United States Information Agency to U.S. embassies throughout the Pacific Rim. Subject: "techno-culture."
Featured Guest, MTV News, MTV, aired week of January 12, 1996. Subject: Regulating hate-speech on-line.

ABOUT THE MATRIX
Why did I create this Web site? Its central mission is to pursue a theme I'm passionate about -- exploring how technology and social change fuel each other. Why do the tools we create get put to certain uses and not another? Why is it that momentous change is often brought on by a series of accidents, usually inventions which were never intended to have the impact that they had? The Web is one such example. What better medium then to explore these issues? I also want to test this theory that on the Net the writer becomes publisher and distributor all in one -- and that somehow it can work out. I want to believe it can work: that I can provide quality information which is accentuated and enhanced by appearing in this medium. I also respond well to the quick turn-around of this medium, and the feedback which develops with readers. That's also why I enjoy writing for magazines and newspapers. I have no idea how this site is going to turn out, or what it might lead to. That's the best part about it.