Jason Pontin

Jason Matthew Daniel Pontin (born 11 May 1967) is an English journalist and was the editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review, a role he held from 2005 to 2017.[1][2]

Jason Pontin
Jason Pontin, Former chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum and former editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review.
Born (1967-05-11) 11 May 1967
London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationHarrow School,
University of Oxford
Alma materKeble College, Oxford
OccupationEditor, journalist, and publisher
EmployerFlagship Pioneering

Early life and education

Pontin was born on 11 May 1967 in London, to a British father, Anthony Charles Pontin, a businessman, and a South African mother, Elaine Howells, an actress.[3] He was raised in Northern California but educated in England, at Harrow School[4] and Oxford University.[5]

Career

From 1996 to 2002, Pontin was the editor of Red Herring, a business and technology publication.[6] From 2002 to 2004, he was the editor of The Acumen Journal, a now-defunct magazine he founded about the life sciences.[7]

He was hired as the editor of Technology Review in July 2004,[8] and in August 2005 was named publisher. Pontin engaged in what The Boston Globe has described as a "strategic overhaul" of Technology Review, whose goal is to make the magazine into a largely electronic publishing company.[9] In October 2012, he renamed the organization MIT Technology Review and relaunched it as a "digital-first enterprise". AdWeek commented that "Pontin and MIT Technology Review could set the standard for the transition to a digital future for legacy media."[10] Pontin was Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum, MIT's global organization of technology entrepreneurs.[11]

Pontin has written for national and international magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times,[12] The Economist, The Financial Times,[13] The Boston Globe,[14] The Believer Magazine,[15] and Wired.[16] He writes a bi-weekly column for Wired in the publication's "IDEAS" channel and contributes to the magazine.[17] In February 2013, he delivered a TED Talk in Long Beach, California, "Can Technology solve our big problems?"[18]

In 2015, under Pontin's leadership, MIT Technology Review launched a conference called Solve[19] that addressed many of the questions raised in his 2013 TED Talk. The 2015 event convened leaders in philanthropy, business, technology, and policy to discuss global challenges in health care, education, resources, and infrastructure.[20] Solve evolved into MIT's open innovation platform: today, Solve solicits solutions to a series of new challenges every year, and hosts events in different cities where innovators present their ideas.

He has engaged in a long-running dispute with Aubrey de Grey regarding de Grey's assertion that it will be possible to reverse ageing. Pontin has written that he considers some of de Grey's strategies to be pseudo-science;[21] de Grey has responded vigorously, and the dispute has persisted for at least a decade.[22][23]

References
  1. "Pontin named publisher of Technology Review".
  2. "Our Team". MIT Technology Review. Technologyreview.com. Retrieved 4 July 2017.
  3. "British 1820 Settlers to South Africa". 1820settlers.com.
  4. "Directory profile". Harrow Association. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  5. "Jason Pontin | World Economic Forum". Weforum.org. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  6. Kurtz, Howard (18 May 2001). "For the Press, Too, a Fall From the Hypes". The Washington Post. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  7. Michael Liedtke (13 May 2003). "Ex-Red Herring Editor Set to Launch Mag – The Edwardsville Intelligencer". Theintelligencer.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  8. "M.I.T. Technology Review Adopts More Serious Tone". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  9. "MIT tech journal getting new publisher, overhaul – The Boston Globe". Boston Globe. 30 August 2005. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  10. Warzel, Charlie (24 October 2012). "MIT Technology Review Relaunches 'Digital-First'". Adweek.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  11. "MIT Technology Review". Technologyreview.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  12. "From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet". The New York Times. 22 April 2007.
  13. "Imitators take note – Steve Jobs was more than a showman". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 January 2017. (subscription required)
  14. "A good meal, unexpected, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  15. "The Believer – Dawit Giorgis: An Oral History". The Believer. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  16. "The Micro-Multinational". Wired. 1 July 2004. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  17. "Jason Pontin | WIRED". www.wired.com. Retrieved 14 March 2018.
  18. "Jason Pontin: Can technology solve our big problems? | TED Talk". TED.com. Retrieved 1 January 2017.
  19. "Solve". Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  20. "Solving the world's great challenges". news.mit.edu. 15 October 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  21. Pontin, Jason. "The SENS Challenge".
  22. Grey, Aubrey de. "Aubrey de Grey Responds".
  23. Nicola (20 October 2016). "Why so much hostility towards SENS?".
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.