Josh Harris (internet)

Josh Harris
Josh Harris (2009).
Born c. 1960
Residence Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
Occupation Internet entrepreneur

Josh Harris (born c. 1960) is an American internet entrepreneur. He was the founder of JupiterResearch and Pseudo.com,[1] a live audio and video webcasting website founded in 1993, which filed for bankruptcy following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000.

Early life

Josh Harris was born circa 1960. He grew up in Ventura, California.[2] His father worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while his mother was a social worker.[2] He has three brothers and three sisters.[2]

Harris majored in communications at UC San Diego and later was a graduate student at the University of Southern California's (USC) Annenberg School for Communication.[3]

Career

Harris founded the technology consulting firm Jupiter Communications in 1986.[3]

In 1993, Harris founded Pseudo Programs, a live streaming television network. In the Pseudo offices in Soho, Harris would throw parties, attracting an array of artists who would come to work for Pseudo.[4]

Harris owned and operated Livingston Orchards, LLC, a commercial apple farm in Columbia County, New York from 2001–2006.[5][6] He was subsequently the CEO of the African Entertainment Network, based in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia.,[5] where he lived after leaving New York.[7] Moreover, he was the CEO of The Wired City, an internet television network based in New York City[8]

We Live in Public

Harris is the focus of director Ondi Timoner's documentary film, We Live in Public, an entry at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary was awarded the Grand Jury Prize award in the US documentary category at the festival.[9]

Among Harris' experiments featured in the film is the art project "Quiet: We Live in Public," an Orwellian, Big Brother type concept developed in the late '90s which placed more than 100 volunteers in a human terrarium under New York City, with many webcams following and capturing every move they made.[10] Alanna Heiss, then the director of the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, was among those who moved in, calling it "one of the most extraordinary activities I've ever attended anywhere in the world."[4] The project was forced to shut down on January 1, 2000 by order of the New York Police Department.[11]

On the Swedish TV show Kobra, Harris stated that he had been widely influenced by the 1998 movie The Truman Show.[12] He strongly believes that the technological singularity will be reached and the human being will cease to be an individual, while the machine becomes the new king of the jungle.[13]

A few months later, Harris started weliveinpublic.com, a project that entailed himself and his then girlfriend, Tanya Corrin, living at home under 24-hour internet surveillance viewable by anyone. After a few months Corrin left Harris and the project citing mental and emotional stress. Harris continued "living in public" for a few more weeks, finally ending the site due to the mental, personal, and financial losses the project caused him.[10][11]

In 2001, an episode of director Errol Morris' First Person television series centered on Harris and the weliveinpublic.com project.

The Wired City television network

In 2011, Harris ran a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to resurrect The Wired City, a streaming television network which would allow viewers to interact with each other.[14]

Personal life

Harris resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.[2] As of 2016, he believes he is under surveillance by the FBI over his ties to an art installation by gelitin in the World Trade Center.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Josh Harris: "Pseudo was a fake company."". Boing Boing.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 McLannahan, Ben (November 23, 2016). "Josh Harris, the internet entrepreneur who lost $50m". Financial Times. Retrieved December 5, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Charles Platt (writer): Steaming Video Wired 8.11, November 2000
  4. 1 2 Carr, David (2009). "Documentary at Sundance Traces Josh Harris, Pioneer of Real-Time Online Living". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-29.
  5. 1 2 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-01-30. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  6. ↑ "Radar Online - Hottest Celebrity Gossip & Entertainment News". Radar Online. Archived from the original on 2009-01-29.
  7. ↑ "New York Post Interview". NY Post. 2009-08-24. Retrieved 2009-05-29.
  8. ↑ Erick Schonfeld. "Wired City: Josh Harris' Plan To Make Us All Live In Public (Video)". TechCrunch. AOL.
  9. ↑ "We Live in Public | Sundance Festival 2009". Festival.sundance.org. 2009-01-01. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  10. 1 2 Wallace, Lewis (2009-01-13). "We Live in Public Tracks Net Spycam Madness | The Underwire from Wired.com". Blog.wired.com. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  11. 1 2 Stephen Dalton: The rise and fall of Josh Harris? The Twitter generation’s voice from the bunker The Times, October 17, 2009
  12. ↑ "Kobra (Episode 8 of 11) | 2009". SVT. 2009-11-24. Archived from the original on 2010-01-10. Retrieved 2010-01-19.
  13. ↑ Kim, Jonathan (2009-10-28). "ReThink Interview: Josh Harris -- Nostradamus of the Net Tells Your Online Future". huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
  14. ↑ "The Wired City | Kickstarter -- The Wired City". kickstarter.com. 2014-05-13. Retrieved 2014-05-13.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.