Stephen L. Baker

Last updated
Stephen L. Baker
Stephen L. Baker 2009.png
Baker at South by Southwest, 2009
Education Harriton High School
Alma mater University of Wisconsin–Madison,
Columbia University
Genrenon-fiction
Notable worksFinal Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything,
Where Does it Hurt? An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Fixing Health Care
Website
www.theboost.us

Stephen L. Baker is an American journalist, non-fiction author, and novelist. He wrote for BusinessWeek for 23 years from the United States, Europe and Latin America. [1] His first non-fiction book, The Numerati, published in 2008, discussed the rise of the data economy. [2] [3] Themes concerning data have marked much of his subsequent work, including his futuristic novel, The Boost. [1] [4]

Contents

Early life

Baker grew up in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. He attended Harriton High School and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he majored in Spanish and History. [1] He attended the University of Madrid in Spain during his junior year. He later received a master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York. [5]

Journalism

Baker began his professional career at the Black River Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Ludlow, Vermont. After working in Venezuela and Ecuador, he spent a year at the El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post. A year later he was BusinessWeek's bureau chief in Mexico City. From Mexico he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he covered industry for six years, and then to Paris, France, where he covered European technology. [6] [7]

Baker has also written for the New York Times, [8] the Wall Street Journal, [9] the Los Angeles Times, [10] and the Boston Globe. In 1992 he received the Overseas Press Club Morton Frank Award, given for best business reporting from abroad in magazines, for his portrait of the rising Mexican auto industry. [11]

Books

Baker’s BusinessWeek 2006 cover story on data, Math Will Rock Your World, [12] was the source for his first published book, The Numerati , published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2008. It described how people would be understood and predicted as workers, shoppers, voters, patients, and potential terrorists. The book was translated into 20 languages. [13]

In early 2011, Houghton Mifflin published Baker's Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, [14] which follows IBM's development of Watson, an artificial intelligence computer system designed to play against humans in the television game show Jeopardy!. [15]

He co-wrote, with Jonathan Bush, the 2014 book Where Does it Hurt? An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Fixing Health Care. [16] It reached the New York Times Best-seller List in June 2014. [17]

His 2014 novel, The Boost, [18] takes place in 2072, a time in which practically everyone on earth carries a cognitive chip, or "boost," implanted in the brain. Kirkus Reviews reviews called it a "techno-thriller with deep, dark roots in the present." [19]

Personal

Baker currently resides in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, Jalaire Craver. They have three adult sons, Jack, Aidan and Henry.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Tory Peterson</span> American naturalist, ornithologist and writer (1908–1996)

Roger Tory Peterson was an American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator and educator, and one of the founding inspirations for the 20th-century environmental movement.

Victor Gollancz Ltd was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century and continues to publish science fiction and fantasy titles as an imprint of Orion Publishing Group.

Scott O'Dell was an American writer of 26 novels for young people, along with three novels for adults and four nonfiction books. He wrote historical fiction, primarily, including several children's novels about historical California and Mexico. For his contribution as a children's writer he received the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1972, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. He received The University of Southern Mississippi Medallion in 1976 and the Catholic Libraries Association Regina Medal in 1978.

<i>Bloomberg Businessweek</i> American weekly business magazine based in New York City

Bloomberg Businessweek, previously known as BusinessWeek, is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City in September 1929. Bloomberg Businessweek business magazines are located in the Bloomberg Tower, 731 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan in New York City and market magazines are located in the Citigroup Center, 153 East 53rd Street between Lexington and Third Avenue, Manhattan in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Phillips</span> American novelist

Arthur Phillips is an American novelist. His books include Prague (2002), The Egyptologist (2004), Angelica (2007), The Song Is You (2009), The Tragedy of Arthur (2011), and The King at the Edge of the World (2020).

<i>Kirkus Reviews</i> American book review magazine

Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. Kirkus Reviews confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature.

Donald Heiney was a sailor and academic as well as a prolific and inventive writer using the pseudonym of MacDonald Harris for fiction.

Samrat Upadhyay (born 1964) is a Nepalese born American writer who writes in English. Upadhyay is a professor of creative writing and has previously served as the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University. He is the first Nepali-born fiction writer writing in English to be published in the West. He was born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, and came to the United States in 1984 at the age of twenty-one. He lives with his wife and daughter in Bloomington, Indiana.

<i>IBM and the Holocaust</i> 2001 book by Edwin Black

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation is a book by investigative journalist and historian Edwin Black which documents the strategic technology services rendered by US-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries for the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler from the beginning of the Third Reich in January 1933 through the last day of the regime in May 1945 at the end of World War II. Published in 2001, with numerous subsequent expanded editions, Black outlined the key role of IBM's technology in the Nazi genocide, by facilitating the regime's generation and tabulation of punch cards for national census data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.

<i>The Wednesday Wars</i> 2007 young adult novel by Gary D. Schmidt

The Wednesday Wars is a 2007 young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. The novel is set in suburban Long Island during the 1967–68 school year. The Vietnam War is an important backdrop for the novel. It was given a Newbery Honor medal in 2008, and was also nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award in 2010.

Beth Kephart is an American author of non-fiction, poetry and young adult fiction for adults and teens. Kephart has written and published over ten books and has received several grants and awards for her writing. She was a National Book Award Finalist for her book "A Slant of the Sun: One Child’s Courage." She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and son. She is a writing partner in the marketing communications firm, Fusion Communications, and occasionally teaches and lectures at the University of Pennsylvania.

Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. (GPG), also known as ABC-Clio/Greenwood, is an educational and academic publisher which is today part of ABC-Clio. Established in 1967 as Greenwood Press, Inc. and based in Westport, Connecticut, GPG publishes reference works under its Greenwood Press imprint, and scholarly, professional, and general interest books under its related imprint, Praeger Publishers. Also part of GPG is Libraries Unlimited, which publishes professional works for librarians and teachers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM Watson</span> Artificial intelligence computer system made by IBM

IBM Watson is a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's founder and first CEO, industrialist Thomas J. Watson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Stewart (writer)</span> American author

Amy N. Stewart is an American author best known for books on horticulture and the natural world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenexa</span> American employment services company

Kenexa, an IBM Company, provides employment and retention services. This includes recruitment process outsourcing onboarding tools, employee assessment, abilities assessment for employment candidates ; and Kenexa Interview Builder, a structured interview archive with example questions.

Steven Kotler is an American author, journalist, and entrepreneur. He is best known for his non-fiction books, including Abundance, A Small Furry Prayer, West of Jesus, Bold, The Rise of Superman and Stealing Fire.

<i>The Discipline of Market Leaders</i> Non-fiction book about business

The Discipline of Market Leaders is a 1995 non-fiction book written by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema and published by Addison-Wesley. The book discusses competitive business strategies. It made The New York Times Best Seller list after the authors placed orders for thousands of copies of their own book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM</span> American multinational technology corporation

The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York and present in over 175 countries. It specializes in computer hardware, middleware, and software, and provides hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with 19 research facilities across a dozen countries, and has held the record for most annual U.S. patents generated by a business for 29 consecutive years from 1993 to 2021.

Bonnie Christensen was an American author and illustrator best known for writing biographies and other illustrated non-fiction books for children and young adults.

Paul Brooks (1909–1998) was a nature writer, book editor, and environmentalist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Stephen Baker". Bloomberg Business.
  2. ↑ Baker, Stephen L. (September 25, 2008). The Numerati: presentation and reading. Powell's Books, Portland, Oregon. (from his 2008 book tour)
  3. ↑ Walker, Rob (October 31, 2008). "They've Got Your Number". New York Times.
  4. ↑ "The Boost". Kirkus Reviews. May 20, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Classes of 1980-89". School of Journalism, Columbia University website.
  6. ↑ "Stephen Baker Bio". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  7. ↑ "Businessweek Tech Beat". Bloomberg Businessweek.
  8. ↑ Baker, Stephen (January 6, 2013). "Can social media sell soap?". New York Times.
  9. ↑ Baker, Stephen (July 11, 2014). "Can a computer win on 'Jeopardy'?". Wall Street Journal.
  10. ↑ Baker, Stephen (July 11, 2014). "If IBM's Watson had legs, it would jaywalk". LA Times.
  11. ↑ "The Morton Frank Award 1992". Overseas Press Club of America.
  12. ↑ Baker, Stephen (January 6, 2013). "Math Will Rock Your World". New York Times.
  13. ↑ "The Boost: Foreign Versions". The Numerati. September 2, 2009.
  14. ↑ Dunn, Andrew (February 19, 2011). "'Jeopardy,' IBM Had Reason to Be Scared of Watson Match: Books". Bloomberg Business.
  15. ↑ Hamm, Steve (18 February 2011). "Steve Baker's Book Final Jeopardy Asks What's Special about Human Intelligence". Building a Smarter Planet.
  16. ↑ Bush, Jonathan; Baker, Stephen (2014). Where Does it Hurt? An Entrepreneur's Guide to Fixing Health Care. Penguin Portfolio. ISBN   9781591846772.
  17. ↑ "Best Sellers: Hardcover NonFiction". New York Times. June 1, 2014.
  18. ↑ "The Boost". Macmillan Publishers.
  19. ↑ "THE BOOST by Stephen Baker". Kirkus Reviews. 17 April 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.