Saturday, May 9, 2009

I was wondering what he's been up to lately...

He wrote more than 100 books. Mainly on ICT subjects but recently he has also joined the stream of environmental futurologists, it appears. I had no idea. He used to look thru his crystal ball and in Delphi Oracle fashion he became notorious in predicting the future of technology. He did that with success during the last thirty years of the previous century. He used to attract thousands of "pilgrims" to his famous ICT seminars. He was the father of Information Engineering. He was one of the early evangelists on the potential of Hypertext long before another Brit invented HTML and the WWW. I heard him talk about TV services like we see them in Hulu and Joost nowadays. But that was back in 1988! Of course, he made himself a multimillionaire during the years. He also actively invested in many companies to some of which he allowed the usage of his name and fame. I served in one of those as (one of the) Continental European managers from 1985 to 1993, when we eventually got sold to Texas Instruments. We were actually the only company that carried his name in our logo. James Martin Associates, that was. However, he also used much of his money to fund the 21st Century School that also carries his name within Oxford University and also a similar Institute for Science and Civilization. He's now in his seventies (he must be) and still active, as a writer, a benefactor and, never too late, a filmmaker. If Al Gore can do it, why not Jim? He even hired Michael Douglas as a narrator. Geriatrics in action!

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