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Brad Templeton Home Brad Ideas (My Blog) Speaking ClariNet Interviews EFF Jokes / RHF Photo Pages Panoramic Photos SF Publishing Software Articles & Essays Robocars Spam DNS Jesus The Book Dot! Packages Interests RHF Home Ty Templeton Home Stig's Inferno Copyright Myths Emily Postnews World Heritage Sites Burning Man Phone Booth Alice Pascal The Rules for Guys Bill Gates Contact Me Me at the now-vanished " Templeton: Next 3 Exits " sign on U.S. 101 (1993) Welcome to my web home page -- a collection of my various essays on technology topics, comedy, my software, my popular amateur photography sub-site, and of course, an exercise in net.narcissism. Also found here are sites for some of my famous family members, with two books and a comic series. I also have a Blog called Brad Ideas . Speaking Today, I am frequently on the road speaking to conferences and companies , both on my own and through my affiliation with Singularity University, a school devoted to understanding and exploiting technology that changes in a rapid and accelerating way. ClariNet You may know me because I was the founder and software architect of ClariNet Communications Corp. , the world's first ever ".com" company (by which I mean a business based on the internet rather than one like uu.net which sold connectivity itself) and which was also the net's first and for a long time largest electronic newspaper. I founded ClariNet in 1989 in Waterloo, Ontario with the crazy idea of trying to make money publishing professional information over the net and to the net audience. It came to take up almost all my time. It became by far the largest paid subscription base on the net, and then In June of 1997, I sold ClariNet to Individual, Inc. which also publishes online news. I also have short bios for press and conferences. I left ClariNet in 1998 after Individual merged with Desktop Data to form Newsedge Corporation. Newsedge's strong focus on business news delivery is the right strategy, but I decided to take a new direction. Since then I've done various part-time projects, including a founding role in Topica and investment and advising for a variety of startups. In addition to the nonprofit boards listed here, I'm also on the technical advisory board of BitTorrent Inc., commercializing the most popular large file publishing software on the net. My current commercial project is writing and consulting about robotic cars including advising the team building these at Google. I'm also a frequent conference speaker . Interviews There have been lots of interviews with me in various magazines and web sites over the years, but the on-web copies tend to vanish with time, so just do a web search for "brad templeton interview" to find ones still around. You can also read how I was one of the plaintiffs in a suit against Janet Reno to stop the Communications Decency Act. I used to have a page of other press mentions of me, but as noted only a few of the links inside it are alive. Robocars In the naughties, I became fascinated with self-driving cars; first because they are a super-cool technology, but later because my research revealed the truly immense numbers around cars that will be changed. I decided they would be one of the largest computer-driven disruptions of the near future. I have made a large series of essays about them as well as a robocar blog . I've been giving talks around the world and consulting for Google's team. Electronic Frontier Foundation I'm Chaiman Emeritus of the EFF, the leading foundation protecting liberties and privacy in cyberspace. (I was chairman from 2000 to 2010 and on the board for around 20 years.) You've probably heard of the EFF, and perhaps think that because of how it was founded that it's funded by rich benefactors. Today it stands on its own and needs the support of members and donors large and small. (Begin beg break) If you support what the EFF is doing to protect freedom of expression, privacy and civil rights online, then do something about it. Visit the EFF Web site , and at the very least join. If you can, donate -- funds are urgently needed right now. The past couple of years have been terrible for charity fundraising due to the market and it's hurting us. If, like some high-tech folk, you still have stock with unrealized capital gains, ask about the stock-donation program that can get you up to a double deduction on your taxes. Please read my letter about supporting the EFF . (End beg break) Foresight Nanotech Institute I am also on the board of the non-profit Foresight Nanotech Institute, the leading advocacy and watchdog group for molecular nanotechnology, founded in 1986 by the field's pioneers. We also focus on futurism and AI. Singularity University In 2009, a new school designed to offer a multi-disciplinary graduate program about the coming 5-15 years of exponentially changing technology was created. Founders included Google, Autodesk, Cisco, Genentech, Nokia, Kauffman, Peter Diamandis of the X-Prize and inventor Ray Kurzweil, as well as NASA Ames, where it's hosted. I chair the program on computing and networking. The summer program is a real trip, with 80 fantastic students from 35 countries, and we also do shorter programs through the year both locally and around the world. It's at SingularityU.org rec.humor.funny You may also know me because I started the net's most widely read newsgroup, rec.humor.funny . RHF is a moderated newsgroup devoted to comedy. Each day, what people estimate are a half million readers send in the lastest (and not-so-latest) jokes they have heard. The moderator picks just the very best and sends them back out the newsgroup. I edited it until 1992, and then passed that task on to Maddi Hausmann, who was followed in 1995 by Jim Griffith who ran it until the late 2010s. I maintain it now, though it's in disrepair. A rec.humor.funny home page describes some of my adventures as one of the first people to be banned on the net . RHF articles continue to be the most widely read thing on the internet and USENET today. For a few years I also did the same thing on the GEnie online service, known as the TeleJoke Round Table . That stopped in 1993. In its way, rec.humor.funny was also what led to the creation of ClariNet . Due to RHF and other matters, we sued the Justice Dept. to get the Communications Decency act declared unconstitutional, and we won in the supreme court. I've also published several jokebooks with material from rec.humor.funny. These can still be ordered, and you can find out about them here . I've also released a new compilation of the very best from those books, plus some more in The Internet Jokebook from Peer-to-Peer publishing. Science Fiction Publishing I'm also a science fiction publisher. In 1993, in a venture into electronic books, I published what was (and as far as I know still is) the largest anthology of current fiction ever published. The Hugo and Nebula Anthology 1993 contains the complete contents of all of the nominees for the Hugo award that year, plus all the short fiction nebula nominees. These are SF's top awards. The anthology, which is available on CD-ROM (and was available on the net for a time) contains all the novels, all the art, all the other fiction and fan material, plus author photos and videos and a hypertext annotated edition of one of the Hugo winners, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. (At Lake Yellowstone, '98) My History, Software & Articles I'm also still very active on the net, and am one of the few brave souls from the early days to still take an active role, though sometimes I wonder why. I joined my first Arpanet mailing list in 1979, and started reading USENET in the spring of 1981. Later that year, Henry Spencer and I, in two independent efforts, made USENET's first international links, bringing the net into Canada. (I was born near Toronto in 1960 and grew up there, moved to Waterloo, Ontario for 13 years then moved to Silicon Valley in California in the 90...