Joi Ito at the Ars Electronica

Joichi Ito (伊藤穰 Itō Jōichi, born June 19, 1966), more commonly known as Joi Ito, is a Japanese-born, American-educated, activist, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Download high resolution version (1200x1600, 803 KB) and , selfmade File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Download high resolution version (1200x1600, 803 KB) and , selfmade File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society which was part of the International Bruckner Festival. ... June 19 is the 170th day of the year (171st in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 195 days remaining. ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Venture capital is a general term to describe financing for startup and early stage businesses as well as businesses in turn around situations. ...

Ito has received much 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, an IRC channel and contributes to the Tokyo Metroblogging. Early on, Joi was involved in running a nightclub in Japan, bringing industrial music from Chicago (Wax Trax) and later the rave scene, including importing Anarchic Adjustment to Japan. He was an active player on the first Multi User Dungeons (MUD) at Essex University and once worked with Sega, on the Dreamcast's online features. PSINet was one of the first internet service providers (ISPs), and a major player in the commercialization of the Internet until the companys bankruptcy in 2001. ... Infoseek was a search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch. ... Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of instant communication over the Internet. ... Metroblogging is an online local media project founded and owned by Sean Bonner and Jason DeFillippo. ... Sega Corporation ) is an international video game software and hardware developing company, and a former home computer and console manufacturer. ... Sega Dreamcast The Sega Dreamcast (Japanese: ドリームキャスト; code-named Katana during development) was Segas last video game console. ...

He also appears as a character in a webcomic, The Adventures of Epicenter, which was once linked to in his blog.

Biography

Ito was born in Kyoto, Japan, and moved to Michigan in the United States at the age of four with his family. At 14, he returned to Japan when his mother became President of the Japanese subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. Kyoto Hall Mayor Yorikane Masumoto Address 〒604-8571 Kyoto-shi, Nakagyo-ku, Teramachi-Oike, 488 Phone number 075-222-3111 Official website: Kyoto City This page is about the city Kyoto. ... Official language(s) None (English, de-facto) Capital Lansing Largest city Detroit Area  Ranked 11th  - Total 97,990 sq mi (253,793 km²)  - Width 239 miles (385 km)  - Length 491 miles (790 km)  - % water 41. ...

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. Finding his course work too rigid and believing that "learning computer science in school was stupid", Ito dropped out of Tufts to later attend the University of Chicago as a physics student. He again dropped out on discovering, in his opinion, the program at Chicago to be to more oriented towards producing practical engineers than teaching physics with a goal toward intuitive understanding of the science. He stayed in Chicago for a year after dropping out of college working as a nightclub disk jockey, working regularly at the Limelight and occasionally spinning records at the Smart Bar. Tufts University is a private university located in Medford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City on a Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Solar System), Athens of America Location Location in Massachusetts Government Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas Menino (Dem) Geographical characteristics Area     City 232. ...   Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Pierre Omidyar (born 21 June 1967) is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist/economist, and the founder and chairman of the eBay auction site. ... eBay Inc. ... The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. ... Physics (from the Greek, φυσικός (physikos), natural, and φύσις (physis), nature) is the Science of Nature. ...

Current Work

Ito is General Manager of International Operations for Technorati, Chairman of Six Apart Japan, and also currently a member of the board of Creative Commons, Socialtext, The Metabrainz Foundation and Technorati Japan. He is the Chairman of the board of Creative Commons International. He is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny Co., Ltd. In October of 2004, he was named to the board of ICANN for a three-year term starting December 2004. In April of 2005, he was named to the board of the Open Source Initiative. In August of 2005, he joined the board of the Mozilla Foundation. In 2006 he was appointed to the board [1] of WITNESS. Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo, PubSub and IceRocket. ... Six Apart Ltd. ... Version 2 of Some Rights Reserved logo No Rights reserved logo The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. ... Socialtext Incorporated is a company based in Palo Alto, California that produces enterprise social software, including a software platform by the same name. ... The MetaBrainz Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit based in San Luis Obispo, California that operates the MusicBrainz project. ... Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo, PubSub and IceRocket. ... A chief executive officer (CEO), or chief executive, is the highest-ranking corporate officer or executive officer of a corporation, or agency. ... ICANN (pronounced I can) is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ... The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software. ... The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. ...

He is attempting, again, to educate himself and is studying at the Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy [2] as a Doctorate of Business Administration candidate focusing on the sharing economy. He is a fellow at The Annenberg Center for Communication of the University of Southern California (USC)[3]. Online and in his lectures, Ito is a vocal advocate of emergent democracy and the sharing economy. Hitotsubashi University (一橋大学; Hitotsubashi Daigaku) is a national university in Tokyo, Japan. ... A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo, or the concept of a favor for a favor in the Latin language. ... Emergent democracy refers to the Internet phenomenon change of the geopolitical landscape to increasingly reflect more democratic principles. ... A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo, or the concept of a favor for a favor in the Latin language. ...

Ito currently lives in Chiba Prefecture, Japan with his partner Mizuka. Ito's sister is Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist studying media technology use, and the musician Cornelius is Ito's second cousin. In addition, he is Timothy Leary's godson. Chiba Prefecture ) is located in the Greater Tokyo Area of Honshu Island, Japan. ... Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist studying media technology use as a teaching fellow and research scientist at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California. ... Keigo Oyamada Cornelius (born Keigo Oyamada (小山田圭吾) 27 January 1969 in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese recording artist and producer. ... For the American baseball player use Tim Leary (baseball player) Timothy Francis Leary, Ph. ... A godparent, in some denominations of Christianity and in Catholicism, is someone who sponsors a childs baptism. ...

Ito is the Guild Master of the We Know [4] on Eitrigg, a US World of Warcraft server. World of Warcraft (commonly abbreviated as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ...

Ito is the co-author of a book (Dialogue: Ryu Murakami X Joichi Ito, 2006) with Japanese author Ryu Murakami. Ryu Murakami (村上龍 Murakami Ryū, born 19 February 1952 in Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. ...

External links

• joi.ito.com - Ito's weblog
• Ito's Diary on LiveJournal
• Ito's Public Wiki
• #joiito, a channel on IRC
• Ito's Biography over at ICANN
• The Adventures of Epicenter, a web comic which Joi occasionally appears in as a character, and was once linked to on his site.
• The Future of Blogging - audio session from Accelerating Change.