Joichi ito biography of martin

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Joichi Ito(伊藤穰一,Itō Jōichi^?, born June 19, ), more commonly known as Joi Ito, is a Japaneseactivist, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist.

Ito has received recognition for his role as an entrepreneur focused on Internet and technology companies and has founded, among other companies, PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan.

He maintains a blog, a wiki and an IRC channel and contributes to the Tokyo Metroblogging. Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons.

Family and education

Ito was born in Kyoto, Japan. His family moved to Canada and then when Ito was about age 3 to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan in the United States where his father became a research scientist and his mother a secretary for Energy Conversion Devices, Inc., now Ovonics.

Company founder Stanford R. Ovshinsky was impressed with Ito, whom he thought of almost as his son. Ovshinsky helped Ito develop his interests in technology and social movements, and at age 13 gave him work with scientists, saying, "He was not a child in the conventional sense."^[1]

Ito and his sister Mizuko Ito, who is called Mimi, spent summers in Japan with their grandmother who taught them traditional Japanese culture.^[2] At 14, he returned to Japan when his mother was promoted to president of Energy Conversion Devices Japan.

He studied at the Nishimachi International School^[3] and for high school, the American School in Japan in Tokyo.^[4] Ito also learned, "street language, street smarts, and computers." One of few Japanese using modems before deregulation of networking reached Japan in , Ito had found the The Source and the original MUD by his teens.^[2]

Ito returned to the U.S.

to attend Tufts University near Boston as a computer science major, where he met, among others, Pierre Omidyar, later founder of eBay.^[5] Finding his course work too rigid and believing that learning computer science in school was "stupid",^[5] Ito dropped out of Tufts to briefly work for Ovonics.

Ovshinsky encouraged him to return to school.

He enrolled at the University of Chicago in physics but dropped out on discovering, in his opinion, the program at Chicago to be more oriented towards producing practical engineers than towards teaching an intuitive understanding of physics.^[1] In the Fall of he became the first student to register for a pioneering program of online courses offered by Connected Education, Inc., for undergraduate credit from the New School for Social Research.

Ito is one of Timothy Leary's godsons - a close non-traditional family-like relationship said to have been conceived by Leary for a few of his friends.^[6][7] Ito's sister is Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist studying media technology use, and the musician Cornelius is his second cousin.

Ito currently lives in Dubai, with his wife Mizuka Ito (nee Kurogane).

Later life

Ito became a disk jockey working in nightclubs in Chicago such as The Limelight and The Smart Bar and to work with Metasystems Design Group to start a virtual community in Tokyo.^[2] Later, Ito ran a nightclub in Roppongi, Japan called XY Relax with help from Joe Shanahan of Metro Chicago/Smart Bar.

He helped bring industrial music from Chicago (Wax Trax) and later the rave scene, including importing Anarchic Adjustment to Japan.

Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons. He is on the board of ,^[8]EPIC,^[9]Technorati, Digital Garage, WITNESS and Global Voices Online. He is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny Co., Ltd.

In October , he was named to the board of ICANN for a three-year term starting December In August , he joined the board of the Mozilla Foundation. He served on the board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) from March until April He currently serves as a Board Emeritus for OSI.^[5] He was a founding board member of Expression College for Digital Arts^[10] as well as the Zero One Art and Technology Network.^[11] In , he served as the Associate to Mr.

Mount (the executive producer) on the film The Indian Runner.^[12] Ito also served as a Board Member of Energy Conversion Devices from to

Ito is a venture capitalist and angel investor and was an early stage investor in Six Apart, Technorati, Flickr, SocialText, Dopplr, , Rupture, Kongregate, etology Inc and other Internet companies.^[13] A vocal advocate of emergent democracy and the sharing economy, Ito is a doctoral candidate in Business Administration focusing on the sharing economy at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University.

Ito is Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC.^[14]

Journalism

Ito has written opinion editorials for the Asian Wall Street Journal^[15] and The New York Times^[16][17] and has published articles in numerous other magazines^[18] and newspapers.

He has had regular columns in The Daily Yomiuri, Mac World Japan, Asahi Pasocom, Asahi Doors, and other media sources. His photographs have been used in The New York Times Online,^[19]BusinessWeek,^[20]American Heritage,^[21]Wired News^[22] and BBC News.^[23] He was on the early editorial mastheads of Wired and Mondo .

He has authored and co-authored a number of books including Dialog - Ryu Murakami X Joichi Ito with Ryu Murakami. He has hosted televisions shows including The New Breed and SimTV shows on NHK.

Media "lists" and honors

Ito was listed by Time Magazine as a member of the "Cyber-Elite" in Ito was listed as one of the 50 "Stars of Asia" in the "Entrepreneurs and Dealmakers" category by BusinessWeek^[24] and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT in ^[25] He was selected by the World Economic Forum in as one of the "Global Leaders for Tomorrow".^[26] chosen by Newsweek as a member of the "Leaders of The Pack (high technology industry)" in ,^[27] and listed by Vanity Fair as a member of "The Next Establishment" in the October Issue, ^[28] Joi Ito was also named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in ^[29]

References

External links