Denise Caruso
(the authorized biography)

Although I had never intended to do anything of the sort, I am surprised and pleased to note that most of my career as a journalist, from which I slightly veered starting in March 2000, I had been writing about, and for, the converging industries of digital technology, telecommunications and interactive media.

Most recently, from October 1995 through March 2000, I had the great good fortune to be invited to write a bi- weekly technology column, called "Digital Commerce," for the Monday Business Day section of The New York Times.

I resigned The Times column to pursue a dream project that I'd been thinking about for a couple of years: a non-profit foundation that I incorporated in February 2000, called The Hybrid Vigor Institute.

If I thought I was ahead of my time with technology ... well, I believe Hybrid Vigor is just as ahead of its time in its quest to move science and research into the 21st century.

I continue to write occasionally for The Times -- most often for the Saturday Arts & Ideas section. On January 1st, 2000, the section started running an ongoing, occasional feature called "Intellectual Works in Progress," which I love writing for. As Hybrid Vigor is focused exclusively on research, this is a terrific venue. (And a terrific section overall.)

For most of 1999, I was engaged in one of the most important projects of my career: a consultancy for the Pew Charitable Trusts and Consumers Union, researching and developing standards and practices for improving credibility on the Internet. In 2001, Consumers Union turned the project into a $3.5 million center, called Consumer Web Watch, funded by Pew, the Knight-Ridder Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute.

The fact that this idea has become reality is one of the pinnacles of my professional life. I am honored to serve as an advisor.

In September 1999, I became a contributing editor for the Time Inc. magazine, Real Simple. It was fun while it lasted, which wasn't long.

In April 1997, I took a sabbatical from The Times to serve as a visiting scholar at Interval Research in Palo Alto, a laboratory run by the computer industry pioneer David Liddle. During my time at Interval, I also was a visiting lecturer at Stanford University in the Human-Computer Interaction program in the university's Computer Science department.

In 1994, I launched Technology & Media Group, an information services company, for Norman Pearlstine's Friday Holdings. (Pearlstine is the former executive editor of the Wall Street Journal, now the editor in chief of Time Inc.)

Previous to Technology & Media, I was the founding editor of Digital Media -- then acclaimed as the seminal newsletter in the emerging new media industry -- published by industry pioneer Jonathan Seybold's Seybold Publications, owned by Ziff Davis.

Prior to launching Digital Media in 1990, I served five years as anchor columnist for the San Francisco Examiner's Sunday technology section. My career as a technology journalist began in 1984 with two venerable trade publications: InfoWorld, where I served as a reporter and columnist, and in 1985 at Electronics, as a West Coast Editor. I was also a frequent contributor to the San Jose Mercury News.

My technology-focused essays and analysis have been published in a wide variety of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, WIRED, I.D. Magazine, and the Utne Reader; I have also provided occasional commentary for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered."

I'm proud to say that I was one of the earliest advocates of First Amendment rights in cyberspace, and one of the first journalists to focus on the intersection of technology, commerce and culture. In 1990, I served on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and in 1995 was elected to the board of the Independent Media Institute, where I now serve as vice president.

I often speak, or moderate panels, at a variety of seminars and industry events. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Annual Meeting, the Harvard Conference on Internet and Society, and Journalism and Technology conferences at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard; the Newspaper Association of America's annual meeting; the Consumer Electronics Show; the American Center for Design; the American Institute for Graphic Artists; the American Magazine Conference; the Association for Computing Machinery; the Media & Democracy Congress; New York Women in Communication; the Rand Corporation; The Internet Summit; South by Southwest; and the Society of Professional Journalists.

I've also participated in various programs sponsored by the American Film Institute, Boston College, the Freedom Forum at Columbia University, the Stern School of Business and the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, the Center for Communication, and the Information Industries Association.

I have a Bachelor's degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and I live and work in the most beautiful and overpriced city in the world: San Francisco.

Don't you know
who I am?