Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold (born July 7, 1947) is a critic, writer, and teacher; his specialties are on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing). Rheingold was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, from 1964 to 1968. His senior thesis was entitled "What Life Can Compare with This? Sitting Alone at the Window, I Watch the Flowers Bloom, the Leaves Fall, the Seasons Come and Go." A lifelong fascination with mind altering and its methods led Rheingold to the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Xerox PARC. There he worked on and wrote about the earliest personal computers. This led...