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Esther Dyson

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Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings, is an active investor in a variety of start-ups around the world. Her interests include information technology, health care, private aviation, and space travel.

Stories from Esther Dyson

Illustration by Paul Lachine
The Patient as Consumer
In the health sector, privacy issues take time to handle, but more data from medical records can improve care
Esther Dyson
10/04/2011

There’s an old joke on Madison Avenue: Half of all the advertising is wasted on customers who will never buy – it’s just that nobody knows which half. People avoid health-care jokes, but you could say the same thing about drugs.

In fact, in both advertising and pharmaceuticals, no one knows what the numbers are, because no one knows what “effectiveness” means, other than people buying things or recovering their health. But was it the advertisements or the drugs that led to one outcome or another?

Wikileaks' Flawed Answer to a Flawed World
WikiLeaks’ Flawed Answer To a Flawed World
In a world of imperfect authorities, there can be no clear line, but it should be drawn far from where most of them put it
Esther Dyson
05/02/2011

Long ago, I wrote about the Internet pioneer Julf Helsingius, who ran a precursor to WikiLeaks called anon.penet.fi. As I said then: “Anonymity in itself should not be illegal. There are enough good reasons for people to be anonymous that it should be [allowed] – at least in some places on the Net (as in real life).”

10 Facebooking
Face-to-Face with Facebook
While many protest data sharing, millions of others are calmly managing their reputations online
Esther Dyson
01/07/2010

Long ago, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was in grade school, I wrote a book (Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age) in which I lauded something called “P3” (now p3p), the platform for privacy preferences. I was sure that people would start using P3 or something like it to control access to data about themselves. Of course, I was wrong...for about 10 years. 

Now, at last, it’s starting to happen - though not exactly the way I envisioned it. Nor is it exactly the way Zuckerberg envisioned it... 

10 Google
Big Brother Google?
The danger in digital technology lies in the concentration of information – and thus in a concentration of power
Esther Dyson
Project Syndicate
01/03/2009
“Google violates its ‘don’t be evil’ motto.” To Google’s credit, if you google that sentence, you can find reference to a debate on that claim that I took part in recently.

As it happens, I have a complex relationship with Google. I have fed at its trough many times – as a personal guest; as an advisory board member of Stop Badware, an NGO it sponsors; and as a speaker at its events. I also sit on the board of 23andMe, co-founded by the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

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