People of Long Now

Mitchell Kapor

Emeritus Member of the Board of Directors

Mitchell Kapor is a pioneer of the personal computing revolution and has been at the forefront of information technology for 30 years as an entrepreneur, software designer, angel investor, and activist. He is widely known as founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 01980s.

Mr. Kapor is currently active as an angel investor with some 20 investments in seed stage startup companies developing disruptive Internet and mobile innovations. He serves on the boards of numerous organizations including Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life (the largest online virtual world) and ePals (the Internet's largest global community of connected classrooms), and the advisory boards of Generation Investment Management (sustainable, long-term investing), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights on the Internet), the Sunlight Foundation (improving access to government information), and the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and other free content projects.

Mr. Kapor has written widely about the impact of personal computing and networks on society. He has contributed articles, columns, and op-ed pieces on information infrastructure policy, intellectual property issues, and antitrust in the digital era to Scientific American, The New York Times, Forbes, the Communications of the ACM, and Huffington Post.

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