Doc Searls

Last updated

Doc Searls
Docsearls 2020 03 09.jpg
Born (1947-07-29) July 29, 1947 (age 76)
Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation(s)Author, Journalist, Podcaster, Photographer
Website searls.com, blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc [ dead link ]

David "Doc" Searls (born July 29, 1947), is an American journalist, columnist, and a widely read blogger. He is the host of FLOSS Weekly, a free and open-source software (FLOSS) themed netcast from the TWiT Network, a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto , author of The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge , Editor-in-Chief of Linux Journal , a fellow at the Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, an alumnus fellow (2006–2010) of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and co-host of the Reality 2.0 Podcast.

Contents

Overview

Searls' journalism career began in 1971, when he worked as an editor and photographer for Wayne Today in New Jersey.

A longtime advocate for open-source software, he has been involved with the Linux Journal since it began publishing in 1994. He became a Contributing Editor in 1996, Senior Editor in 1999, and Editor-in-Chief in 2018. His column "Linux for Suits" ran until 2007, and was followed by "EOF" inside each issue's back cover. His work with Linux Journal, and as an advocate of free software and open-source, earned him a Google-O'Reilly Open Source Award for Best Communicator in 2005. [1] His byline has also appeared in many other publications, including OMNI , Wired , PC Magazine , The Standard, The Sun Magazine, Upside , Release 1.0 and The Globe and Mail .

In early 1999 Searls joined Christopher Locke, David Weinberger and Rick Levine in writing The Cluetrain Manifesto, an iconoclastic website that was followed in January 2000 by the book with the same title. The book was published in nine languages. A 10th Anniversary edition came out in June 2009. Among Searls' contributions to the Manifesto was its first thesis, "Markets are conversations"—also the title of the Cluetrain chapter he co-wrote with David Weinberger. Weinberger and Searls co-wrote "World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else".

Searls has also been a blogger since October 1999, when he started blogging with help from his friend Dave Winer. In an Online Journalism Review article, J.D. Lasica calls Searls "one of the deep thinkers in the blog movement." [2]

In The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman calls Searls "one of the most respected technology writers in America." [3]

Searls' two academic fellowships both began in 2006. At the Berkman Center for Internet & Society he leads ProjectVRM, which guides independent software development communities working on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). The purpose of VRM is to equip individuals with tools that provide both independence from vendor "lock-in" and better means for engaging with vendors. VRM tools and methods also help individuals engage with government and other non-commercial organizations. At the Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Searls is studying both the nature of infrastructure and of the Internet as a form of infrastructure.

In April 2012, his book The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge was published. Searls coined the term in an article for Linux Journal. He wrote: "The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them." [4]

In September 2018, Searls spoke at TedX Santa Barbara, giving a talk titled [5] "The Story isn't the Whole Story: Journalism in the digital age is challenged by a business model of automated advertising that creates widespread distrust. Truth is getting lost in the process. What can we do about that?"

Background

The nickname "Doc" is what Searls calls a "fossil remnant" of "Doctor Dave", his humorous persona at WDBS (now WXDU) radio at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, in the late 1970s. [6] Following his work in radio, Searls co-founded Hodskins Simone & Searls (HS&S). Searls' consultancy, The Searls Group, was spun out of HS&S in the early 1990s. He is a frequent speaker at business and industry events, under the auspices of The Searls Group.

Searls is a 1969 graduate of Guilford College. While Searls' permanent home is in Santa Barbara, he and his family currently live most of the year near his work at Harvard.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Winer</span> American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer

Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting. He is the founder of the software companies Living Videotext, Userland Software and Small Picture Inc., a former contributing editor for the Web magazine HotWired, the author of the Scripting News weblog, a former research fellow at Harvard Law School, and current visiting scholar at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free software</span> Software licensed to be freely used, modified and distributed

Free software, libre software, or libreware is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free and open-source software</span> Software whose source code is available and which is permissively licensed

Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software, where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is publicly available so that people are encouraged to improve the design of the software. This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Heinemeier Hansson</span> Programmer, racing driver, creator of Ruby on Rails

David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer and racing driver. As a programmer, he is the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the web-based software development firm 37signals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin Mako Hill</span> Debian hacker, intellectual property researcher, activist and author

Benjamin Mako Hill is a free software activist, hacker, author, and professor. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the co-author of three technical manuals on the subject, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible, The Official Ubuntu Server Book, and The Official Ubuntu Book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Stallman</span> American free software activist and GNU Project founder (born 1953)

Richard Matthew Stallman, also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software that ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris DiBona</span>

Chris DiBona was the director of open source at Google from August 2004 until January 2023.

<i>FLOSS Weekly</i> Technology podcast

FLOSS Weekly is a free and open-source software (FLOSS) themed netcast from the TWiT Network. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features interviews with prominent guests from the free software/open source community. It was originally hosted by Leo Laporte; his co-host for the first seventeen episodes was Chris DiBona and subsequently Randal Schwartz. In May 2010, Schwartz took over from Laporte as lead host. May 2020 saw Doc Searls take over the host role in episode 578, and Jonathan Bennett leads the show since episode 762 in December 2023.

Vendor relationship management (VRM) is a category of business activity made possible by software tools that aim to provide customers with both independence from vendors and better means for engaging with vendors. These same tools can also apply to individuals' relations with other institutions and organizations.

Christopher Locke was an American business analyst, consultant, journalist, author and speaker. He is known as a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and author of two other books: Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy. In a Financial Times Group survey from 2001, Locke was named as one of the fifty leading business thinkers in the world.

The intention economy is an approach to viewing markets and economies focusing on buyers as a scarce commodity. Customers' intention to buy drives the production of goods to meet their specific needs. It is also the title of Doc Searls book: The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge published in May, 2012.

<i>The Cluetrain Manifesto</i>

The Cluetrain Manifesto is a work of business literature collaboratively authored by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. It was first posted to the web in 1999 as a set of ninety-five theses, and was published as a book in 2000 with the theses extended by seven essays. The work examines the impact of the Internet on marketing, claiming that conventional marketing techniques are rendered obsolete by the online "conversations" that consumers have and that companies need to join.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Weinberger</span> American philosopher (1950-)

David Weinberger is an American author, technologist, and speaker. Trained as a philosopher, Weinberger's work focuses on how technology — particularly the internet and machine learning — is changing our ideas, with books about the effect of machine learning’s complex models on business strategy and sense of meaning; order and organization in the digital age; the networking of knowledge; the Net's effect on core concepts of self and place; and the shifts in relationships between businesses and their markets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Freeman</span> American computer scientist

Jay Ryan Freeman is an American businessman and software engineer. He is known for creating the Cydia software application and related software for jailbroken iOS—a modified version of Apple's iOS that allows for the installation and customization of software outside of the regulation imposed by the App Store system.

The O'Reilly Open Source Award is presented to individuals for dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source. From 2005 to 2009 the award was known as the Google–O'Reilly Open Source Award but since 2010 the awards have only carried the O'Reilly name.

<i>The Intention Economy</i> Book by Doc Searls

In April 2012, Doc Searls' book The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge was published. Searls coined the term intention economy in a March 2006 article for Linux Journal. He wrote: "The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nextcloud</span> Free and open-source file hosting software suite

Nextcloud is a suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. Nextcloud provides functionality similar to Dropbox, Office 365 or Google Drive when used with integrated office suites Collabora Online or OnlyOffice. It can be hosted in the cloud or on-premises. It is scalable, from home office software based on the low cost Raspberry Pi, all the way through to full sized data centers that support millions of users. Translations in 60 languages exist for web interface and client applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME 1</span> First major release of GNOME

GNOME 1 is the first major release of the GNOME desktop environment. Its primary goal was to provide a consistent user-friendly environment in conjunction with the X Window System. It was also a modern and free and open source software alternative to older desktop environments such as the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), but also to the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Each desktop environment was built-upon then proprietary-licensed widget toolkits, whereas GNOME's goal from the onset, was to be freely-licensed, and utilize the GTK toolkit instead.

References

  1. ↑ "Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards - Hall of Fame". Google Developers. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
  2. ↑ Weblogs: A New Source of News, by J.D. Lasica, 2002-04-18, Online Journalism Review
  3. ↑ Thomas L. Friedman calls Doc "one of the most respected technology writers in America.”, by Thomas L. Friedman
  4. ↑ Searls, Doc (March 8, 2006). "The Intention Economy". Linux Journal. Retrieved September 28, 2007.
  5. ↑ Foley, Christopher (August 5, 2018). "Doc Searls | The Story isn't the whole story". TEDxSantaBarbara. Archived from the original on September 30, 2023.
  6. ↑ "Getting rained out in a brainstorm", February 4, 2009, Doc Searls Weblog.
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.