John Levine was a member of a computer club in high school - before high school students, or even high schools, had computers - where he met Theodor H. Nelson, the author of Computer Lib/Dream Machines and the inventor of hypertext, who reminded us that computers should not be taken seriously and that everyone can and should understand and use computers. John wrote his first program in 1967 on an IBM 1130 (a computer somewhat less powerful than your typical modern digital wristwatch, only more difficult to use). He became an official system administrator of a networked computer at Yale in 1975. He began working part-time - for a computer company, of course - in 1977 and has been in and out of the computer and network biz ever since. He got his company on Usenet (the Internet''s worldwide bulletinboard system) early enough that it appears in a 1982 Byte magazine article on a map of Usenet, which then was so small that the map fit on half a page. Although John used to spend most of his time writing software, he now mostly writes books (including UNIX For Dummies and Internet Secrets, both published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.) because it''s more fun and he can do so at home in the tiny village of Trumansburg, New York, where in his spare time he is the mayor (yes, really, see www.
Trumansburg.ny.us) and can play with his small daughter when he''s supposed to be writing. John also does a fair amount of public speaking. (Go to www.johnlevine.com, to see where he''ll be.) He holds a B.
A. and a Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University, but please don''t hold that against him. Carol Baroudi first began playing with computers in 1971 at Colgate University, where two things were new: the PDP-10 and women. She was lucky to have unlimited access to the state-of-the-art PDP-10, on which she learned to program, operate the machine, and talk to Eliza (a computer-based shrink). She taught ALGOL and helped to design the curricula for computer science and women''s studies. She majored in Spanish and studied French, which, thanks to the Internet, she can now use every day.
Carol''s been working in the computer industry since 1975. Today she''s an industry analyst, consulting to emerging technology companies. (Check out what she''s doing at www.baroudi.com.) Carol loves Europe and is always looking for reasons to go. She believes that we are living in a very interesting time when technology is changing faster than people can imagine. Carol hopes that as we learn to use the new technologies, we don''t lose sight of our humanity.
She feels that computers can be useful and fun, but are no substitute for real life. In high school, Margaret Levine Young was in the same computer club as her big brother John. She stayed in the field throughout college against her better judgment and despite John''s presence as a graduate student in the computer science department. Margy graduated from Yale and went on to become one of the first PC managers in the early 1980s at Columbia Pictures, where she rode the elevator with big stars whose names she wouldn''t dream of dropping here. Since then, Margy has co-authored more than 25 computer books about topics that include the Internet, UNIX, WordPerfect, Microsoft Access, and (stab from the past) PC-File and Javelin; including The Internet For Dummies Quick Reference , Dummies 101: The Internet For Windows 98 , and UNIX For Dummies (all published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.), Poor Richard''s Building Online Communities (published by Top Floor Publishing), and Windows XP Home Edition: The Complete Reference and Internet: The Complete Reference (published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill). She met her future husband, Jordan, in the R.E.
S.I.S.T.O.R.S. (that computer club we mentioned).
Her other passion is her children, along with music, Unitarian Universalism (www.uua.org), reading, and anything to do with eating. She lives in Vermont (see www.gurus.com/margy for some scenery) and works as a software engineer for the Unitarian Universalist Association (www.uua.org).