Brad Templeton

Board member Foresight Nanotech Institute
Board advisor for Starship Technologies, NewAer and Quanergy
Writer and researcher for Robocars.com
MTP: To improve cities, life and travel with AI, Robotics and new Mobility
Inquire About Brad

Brad Templeton was founder, publisher and software architect at ClariNet Communications Corp., the #1 internet-based electronic newspaper publisher, until selling it to NewsEdge Corporation in 1997. Via ClariNet, he was a plaintiff in the case to get the USA’s Communications Decency Act successfully overturned in the supreme court.

Brad has been active in the computer network community since 1979, participated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days — including being one of the first to set up an international link — and in 1987 he founded and edited a special edited USENET conference devoted to comedy. This newsgroup, “rec.humor.funny” became the most widely read computerized conference in the world, and exists on the web as www.netfunny.com, the longest-running blog today.

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He is a founding faculty member at Singularity University, and was chair for computing from 2010-2017.

He also writes and researches the future of automated transportation at Robocars.com. He spent 2 years advising Google’s self-driving car team focusing on strategy and future technologies.

He is a regular speaker at conferences around the world, on topics such as self-driving cars, privacy, computer freedom, Bitcoin and many other topics. He is actively researching how to combine telephony and Presence.

Templeton was the first employee of Personal Software/Visicorp, which was the first major microcomputer applications software company. He is also the author of a dozen packaged microcomputer software products, including VisiPlot for the IBM-PC, the compressor in Stuffit — the world’s most widely used Macintosh application, various games, popular tools and utilities for Commodore computers, special Pascal and Basic programming environments (ALICE) designed for education, an add-in spreadsheet compiler (3-2-1 Blastoff) for Lotus 1-2-3 (picked by PC World as one of the top software products of 1987) and various network-related software tools. Most of this was done through Looking Glass Software Limited, a software company he owned and operated from 1983 to 1991.

Templeton also published in 1993 a CD-ROM containing the largest anthology of current fiction made to date. ClariNet’s experiment in electronic books gathered all the material nominated for Science Fiction’s top awards in one place, in time for award voters to use it as a resource.

He is Chairman Emeritus and futurist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a longtime writer on cyberspace issues. He served as chairman of the EFF from 2000 to 2010 and on its board for almost 20 years.

He is on the board of the futurist Foresight Nanotech Institute, the premier advocacy group and think-tank for issues relating to Molecular Nanotechnology. He’s a software design advisor to BitTorrent, Inc., the corporation founded to commercialize the world’s most popular P2P large-file publishing software and a former member of its board of directors. He also advises other startups such as Starship Technologies (Delivery Robots), NewAer (Bluetooth social) and Quanergy (Automotive LIDAR.)

His biggest hobby is fine-art panoramic landscape photography. For this, and other projects, he is a popular artist at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada, where he’s a well-known photographer and artist.

He grew up near Toronto and now lives in Silicon Valley. He holds a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo. Full information can be found at his web site.

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Topics

Robocars: Computers driving cars and changing the world

Brad covers the technology of cars that drive themselves, and their incredible consequences for saving lives, energy, cities, retailing, food, industry and many other aspects of life.

The Future of Computing

This talk covers a range of subjects about computing and networks, including some special subset talks that can be broken out individually.

  • Lessons from the Internet on an exponential revolution: What the internet and software teach about how to run a company in the 21st century.
  • The coming abundance of bandwidth
  • New user interfaces including augmented and virtual reality
  • The Internet of Things
  • Quick Moore’s Law introduction
  • Quick bitcoin introduction
  • Models of future network dominance
Bitcoin and the Future of Money

Bitcoin is a digital money that decentralizes banking, a currency that can cross borders, allows mostly anonymous payment, but works without banks or nations.

Testimonials

“Brad’s combination of charisma, wit and intelligence made him the stand-out speaker at the Think with Google events across Europe. He inspired C-level audiences from London to Rome to Amsterdam and was consisently rated the best speaker.”

- Matt Brocklehurst, Marketing Lead, Performance Solutions, Google

“Brad is the consultant to the world’s foremost thinkers. He delivers deeply technical and evolving trends In a consumable and light hearted way that engages, inspires and enlightens early talent to the most senior executives. Brad is my default presenter when I need to explain the future of Silicon Valley’s innovations.”

- Scott Letherman, COO, SAP U.S. Labs.

“Brad Templeton was truly inspiring, engaging our alumni and students with his humor and incredible knowledge and insight. His talks were thought provoking, insightful and provocative, both presentations were fantastic and exceeded -expectations.”

- Fred Lee, Director of Alumni Engagement, University of British Columbia

“We invited Brad to participate in a live Q&A with our co-founder. It was delightful, covering everything from the early days of autonomous vehicles to transportation in the COVID-19 era and beyond. The hour passed by so quickly. I wish it could have continued for another hour. Our employees enjoyed it immensely. Thank you Brad!”

— Calisa Cole, VP Marketing, DeepMap
Board member Foresight Nanotech Institute
Board advisor for Starship Technologies, NewAer and Quanergy
Writer and researcher for Robocars.com
MTP: To improve cities, life and travel with AI, Robotics and new Mobility
Inquire About Brad
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