Philip Elmer-DeWitt (born September 8, 1949) is an American writer and editor. He was ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' first computer writer—producing much of the magazine's early coverage of personal computers and the Internet—and for 12 years its science editor. He is currently writing a daily blog about Apple Inc. called Apple 3.0.

Background

Elmer-DeWitt was born in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and raised in the

Six Moon Hill Six Moon Hill is a residential neighborhood and historic district of mid-century modern houses in Lexington, Massachusetts. Description Incorporated in 1947, the community originally encompassed 28 houses which were built between 1947 and 1953. ...

neighborhood of

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...

. He graduated from

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

and studied English literature at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and journalism at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. He worked as a computer programmer and technical writer for

Bolt Beranek and Newman Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...

https://books.google.com/books?id=6KKpnpLevg4C&pg=PA300&lpg=PA300&dq=Faflick+feurzeig&source=web&ots=lSgYs60De0&sig=foUqkhV8Te2PTUGocDROnZPbSvY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result Feurzeig et al. 1971 in the late '60s, wrote mathematical games for

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...

in the early 1970s and copy-edited textbooks and scientific monographs for

Academic Press Academic Press (AP) is an academic book publisher founded in 1941. It was acquired by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1969. Reed Elsevier bought Harcourt in 2000, and Academic Press is now an imprint of Elsevier. Academic Press publishes reference ...

in the late '70s.

Career highlights

Elmer-DeWitt joined ''

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' in 1979 and wrote nearly 500 stories for the magazine, including a dozen cover stories. He launched two sections—Computers and Technology—before being made a senior editor. He edited more than 150 ''Time'' cover stories, including the issues that named AIDS researcher David Ho Time's 1996 Man of the Year and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

the Person of the Century. His interviews include

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...

Elmore Leonard Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925August 20, 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thri ...

, and

Anita Roddick Dame Anita Lucia Roddick (23 October 1942 – 10 September 2007) was a British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner, best known as the founder of the British version of The Body Shop, now The Body Shop Internationa ...

. He was also the author of the controversial

Cyberporn Internet pornography is any pornography that is accessible over the internet, primarily via websites, FTP servers peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups. The availability of widespread public access to the World Wide Web in late 1990s ...

cover story. In commenting on that episode,

Declan McCullagh Declan McCullagh is an American entrepreneur, journalist, and software engineer. He is the CEO and co-founder, with computer scientist Celine Bursztein, of Recent Media Inc., a startup in Silicon Valley that has built a recommendation engine and ...

excoriated Elmer-DeWitt for multiple "misrepresentations and errors," "logical fallacies," reporting in a "deceptive manner," and " efusingto acknowledge the many errors" in the story. Elmer-DeWitt helped start TIME.com, and organized ''

'' -sponsored scientific conferences on

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

(2003),

obesity Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may negatively affect health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's we ...

(2004) and

global health Global health is the health of the populations in the worldwide context; it has been defined as "the area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide". Problem ...

. In January 2007, he joined

Josh Quittner Josh Quittner (born February 12, 1957) is an American journalist. Quittner is CEO of Decrypt Media, a leading independent publication covering the world of Web 3.0, cryptocurrency, NFTs and more. Born in Manhattan, Quittner grew up in Reading, ...

at ''

Business 2.0 ''Business 2.0'' was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the " New Economy". First published in July 1998, the magazine was sold ...

'', another Time Inc. publication, as that magazine's executive editor. In February, he launched a blog calle
Apple 2.0: Mac news from outside the reality distortion field
When Time Inc. folded ''Business 2.0'' in September 2007, he worked briefly for ''Fortune'' magazine before retiring from Time Inc. in May 2008 to write full-time for the web, first for Fortune.com, then in 2016 for himself. He moved to Western Massachusetts in 2014 and launched Apple 3.0 on April 1, 2016.

Select works from ''Time''

* The Rio

Earth Summit The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Earth Su ...

* Sex in America *

Obesity Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may negatively affect health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's we ...

Infertility Infertility is the inability of a person, animal or plant to reproduce by natural means. It is usually not the natural state of a healthy adult, except notably among certain eusocial species (mostly haplodiploid insects). It is the normal state ...

* Bards of the Net *

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

* The

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

References

External links

Interview on NPR One with Roben Farzad

Interview on ''The Pipeline'' with Dan Benjamin

Interview on ''The Critical Path'' with Horace Dediu

Interview on ''The Distraction''

LinkedIn Profile
*
The Navigator: Elmer-DeWitt at ''Business 2.0''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elmer-Dewitt, Philip 1949 births American science journalists American male journalists Living people American magazine editors Oberlin College alumni People from Lexington, Massachusetts Time (magazine) people