Brad Templeton (born June 1960 near

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

) is a Canadian software developer, internet entrepreneur, online community pioneer, publisher of news, comedy, science fiction and e-books, writer, photographer, civil rights advocate, futurist, public speaker, educator and

self-driving car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

consultant. He graduated from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

Notable projects

ClariNet

Most notably, Templeton was founder and CEO in 1989 of

ClariNet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitch ...

Communications, the first company founded to engage in commercial activity over the early Internet.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Templeton has been involved with the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

since 1997, including being chairman from 2000 to 2010. His involvement in online civil rights also includes being subject of one of the first major internet bans and being a plaintiff before the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...

Reno v. ACLU ''Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union'', 521 U.S. 844 (1997), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, unanimously ruling that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendme ...

Templeton's strongest efforts have been in the areas of free speech, computer security, privacy and intellectual property.

rec.humor.funny and USENET

Templeton played an active role over the life of

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

, including the development of software tools for it. His most notable activities involved the creation and moderation of the newsgroup "rec.humor.funny", a moderated newsgroup devoted to comedy. USENET statistics reported by Brian Reid reported rec.humor.funny as the most widely read online publication starting in 1989, continuing in that position into the mid-1990s, with an estimated 440,000 readers.

Software career

Templeton began as the first employee of

VisiCorp VisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. Its most famous products were Microchess, Visi On and VisiCalc. It was founded in 1976 by Dan Fylstra and Peter R. Jennings as Personal Software, and first published Jennings' Microc ...

(then called Personal Software Inc.) the first PC applications software company, where he published several games and tools and assisted on

Visicalc VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hob ...

the first spreadsheet and personal computing productivity tool. He also developed the IBM-PC version of the VisiPlot companion before release of the PC. He was CEO and Founder of Looking Glass Software Ltd. in

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. His software specialty has been languages, tools and spreadsheets, as well as software for USENET.

e-Books

Templeton was editor and publisher for

's Hugo and Nebula Anthology 1993, one of the largest early commercial e-Book projects. It offered 5 full novels still in hardback release, along with a wide array of short fiction and multimedia. In later years, it has become the norm for the administrators of the

Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier ...

to produce an annual digital anthology of award nominees. This was an adjunct of the "Library of Tomorrow" project, which offered a full library of fiction on an "all you can read" subscription basis. The library failed, but presaged many similar attempts to sell online content by subscription.

Foresight Institute

Since 2004, Templeton has been a board member of the Foresight Institute, one of the oldest futurist organizations and the leading one in the field of

nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...

Singularity University

Templeton joined the founding faculty for

Singularity University Singularity Education Group (using the public names Singularity Group, Singularity University or SingularityU) is an American company that offers executive educational programs, a business incubator, and business consultancy services. Although ...

, an educational institution and think-tank devoted to rapidly changing technology and its effects. Since 2010 he has been Chair for Networks and Computing on that faculty.

Robocars

Templeton has been an active writer in the field of

Robocar A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for Sa ...

s since 2007, building the sit
Robocars.com
and writing regularly a
Brad Ideas
In 2010, he joined the

Google self-driving car Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google. Waymo ope ...

project (now known as Waymo) where he consulted on strategy and technology. He has also served as a consulting advisor for

Starship Technologies Starship Technologies is an Estonian company developing autonomous delivery vehicles. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with engineering operations in Tallinn, Estonia and in Helsinki, Finland. Starship also has office ...

in the delivery robot space and

Quanergy Quanergy Solutions Inc. is a privately held Silicon Valleybased technology company that develops LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors and related technology. History Quanergy was co-founded in 2012 by Louay Eldada, Angus Pacala (also co ...

LIDAR Lidar (, also LIDAR, or LiDAR; sometimes LADAR) is a method for determining ranges (variable distance) by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. It can also be ...

, among others. He writes frequently on this topic on his own web site, the

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

site and others. Templeton is inventor on 21 patents in self-driving cars and telephony.

Speaker

Templeton has been a keynote speaker at many conferences and events, including

Wired UK ''Wired UK'' is a bimonthly magazine that reports on the effects of science and technology. It covers a broad range of topics including design, architecture, culture, the economy, politics and philosophy. Owned by Condé Nast Publications, it is ...

, Pioneers Festival Vienna,

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thr ...

Master Mind Class,

Web Summit Web Summit is an annual technology conference held in Lisbon, Portugal. Founded in 2009 by Paddy Cosgrave, David Kelly, and Daire Hickey, Web Summit was originally held in Dublin, Ireland until 2016, when it moved permanently to Lisbon. Web S ...

, Next Berlin,

The Next Web TNW (The Next Web) is a website and annual series of conferences focused on new technology and start-up companies in Europe. The Next Web company was established in 2006 by co-founders Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and Patrick de Laive in Amsterd ...

Amsterdam, Ontario Centres of Excellence Toronto, USI Paris, Australian Unix Users Group (

AUUG AUUG was an Australian association and users' group. It described itself as the organisation for Unix, Linux and Open Source professionals. Its aim was to build a community of those interested in open systems and open standards. The newslett ...

) Sydney, Korean Global Leaders Forum,

CLSA CLSA Ltd. (formerly known as Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia) is a capital markets and investment group focused on alternative investment, asset management, corporate finance and capital markets, securities and wealth management for corporate an ...

Forum Hong Kong and Tokyo,

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...

Big Talk, Beijing,

Singularity Summit The Singularity Summit was the annual conference of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. It was started in 2006 at Stanford University by Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Peter Thiel, and the subsequent summits in 2007, 2008, 2009, 201 ...

Chile (also Buenos Aires, Christchurch, Budapest, Seville, Johannesburg, Milan, Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen) and Innotown Norway.

Software and bibliography

* Author, '' Time Trek'' game for

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...

(VisiCorp 1978) * Consultant, ''

VisiCalc VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hob ...

'' port to Commodore PET (VisiCorp 1979) * Port, ''Checker King'' game for Apple and Atari (VisiCorp 1979) * Port, '' Microchess'' game for Atari (VisiCorp 1980) * Lead Author, '' Visiplot'' graphing tool for IBM PC (VisiCorp 1981) * Author, ''PAL Assembler'' for

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

computers (Temtech, 1980) * Author, ''POWER'' programming tools for Commodore (Professional Software, Pro-Line) 1981 * Lead Author, ''ALICE: The Personal Pascal''

Structure editor A structure editor, also structured editor or projectional editor, is any document editor that is cognizant of the document's underlying structure. Structure editors can be used to edit hierarchical or marked up text, computer programs, diagrams, c ...

and

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

for IBM PC, Atari ST and QNX (Looking Glass Software / Software Channels, 1985) * Lead Author, ''ALICE Basic'' structure editor and IDE for QNX (Looking Glass Software 1986) * Lead Author, ''3-2-1 Blastoff'' spreadsheet

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

for

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...

(Frontline Systems/Intel, 1987) * Author, ''3-2-1 Gosub'' programming tool for Lotus 1-2-2 (Frontline Systems, 1988) * Compressor Author, '' Stuffit Deluxe'' (Aladdin Systems, 1989) * Author, ''Newsclip'' programming language for

filtering, 1988 * Author, ''TVWish'' wishlist system for

MythTV MythTV is a free and open-source home entertainment application with a simplified "10-foot user interface" design for the living room TV. It turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a network streaming digital video recorder, a digital ...

(open source) * Editor, ''The Internet Jokebook'' (Peer-to-peer Publishing, 1995) * Editor, ''The Telejokebook''/''rec.humor.funny annual'' Vol I-IV (ClariNet 1988–1992) * Editor, ''Electric Science Fiction'' online award nominees (ClariNet, 1992) * Editor, ''Hugo and Nebula Anthology 1993'' (ClariNet, 1995)

Other roles

Templeton was a director of Bittorrent Inc. Bittorrent's software was the largest driver of internet bandwidth use during the early 21st century. He is also the author of several well known internet essays on copyright and

netiquette Etiquette in technology, colloquially referred to as netiquette is a term used to refer to the unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet which is used to regulate respect and polite behavior on social media platforms ...

. He was also an active artist at

Burning Man Burning Man is an event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred ...

creating installations based on photography and telephony.

Family

Templeton is the son of

Charles Templeton Charles Bradley Templeton (October 7, 1915 – June 7, 2001) was a Canadian media figure and a former Christian evangelist. Known in the 1940s and 1950s as a leading evangelist, he became an agnostic and later embraced atheism after strugg ...

and Sylvia Murphy, and the brother of

Ty Templeton Tyrone Templeton is a Canadian comic book artist and writer who has drawn a number of mainstream titles, TV-associated titles, and his own series. Career Templeton first received attention for ''Stig's Inferno'' ( Vortex Comics), now a cult fav ...

References

External links

– Templeton's home page

– rec.humor.funny website

– Templeton's blog

– Robocars {{DEFAULTSORT:Templeton, Brad 1960 births Living people Computer programmers Canadian businesspeople Usenet people University of Waterloo alumni