<p>Japanese American techno visionary Joichi “Joi” Ito is many things — blogger, venture capitalist, club promoter, photographer, physicist, activist, and political philosopher, just to name a few. Born in Kyoto and raised in Canada and Michigan, Ito has been riding the edge of the Internet wave since before the Web existed, and has photographed virtually the entire adventure. After years of bouncing back and forth between Japan and the U.S., he settled in Tokyo in 1997 and since 1999 has dedicated himself to running Neoteny, his venture capital fund. Early this year, he made waves with his “Emergent Democracy Paper,” a sprawling treatise on the potential of weblogs and other social software tools to enable large-scale direct democracy. His weblog, aptly subtitled “Joi Ito’s conversation with the living web,” is part daily diary, part political and cultural column, and part virtual watering hole for the technorati. At the end of September, he joined the Net Advisory Net for presidential candidate Howard Dean’s Internet Initiative, a team that “will focus on how to bridge the ‘digital divide’ by providing universal broadband access to the Internet.”<br />
— <em>Leif Utne</em>
</p>
<p>
<p>
<p>
<strong>Go there>>
</strong>
<a title=”Joi Ito’s Web” href=”http://joi.ito.com/” target=”_blank”>Joi Ito’s Web</a>
</p>
<p>
<p>
<p>
<strong>Related Links:</strong>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href=”http://joi.ito.com/static/emergentdemocracy.html” target=”_blank”>Joi Ito’s “Emergent Democracy Paper”</a>
</li>
<li>
<a title=”Howard Dean’s Net Advisory Net” href=”http://www.deanforamerica.com/NAN/” target=”_blank”>Howard Dean’s Net Advisory Net</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
<p>
<p>
<strong>Related Links from the <em>Utne</em> Archive:</strong>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a title=”Back to the Future” href=”/issues/2003_115/promo/10216-1.html”>Back to the Future</a>
</li>
<li>
<a title=”Get Ready for the Blogs” href=”/issues/2003_115/promo/10222-1.html”>Get Ready for the Blogs</a>
</li>
<li>
<a title=”The Internet is Bad for Democracy” href=”/webwatch/2003_1/news/10243-1.html”>The Internet is Bad for Democracy</a>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
<p>
<p>
<strong>Café Utne:</strong> Discuss weblogs and online democracy in the LifeOnline forum</p>
<p>
<p>
<p>
<strong>Like this? Want more? <a title=”Utne” href=”https://www.utne.com/subscribe/subscribe.aspx”>Subscribe to <em>Utne</em> magazine</a>
</strong>
</p>
