Recon Dotcom

By: Joshua Glenn
March 15, 2010

Personal computers entered the market in 1977, with RadioShack’s TRS-80, Commodore’s PET, and Apple’s Apple II. In 1981, when the oldest members of the Reconstructionist Generation (1964-73) were turning 17, IBM introduced its PC; in ’84, when the youngest Recons were turning 11, Apple introduced the Macintosh. Reconstructionists are a technologically nimble generation — not just adept at using software, but creating and manipulating it.

[This is a selection from a longer post about the Reconstructionist Generation published earlier today.]

As Time would point out in a “Whoops! We were wrong!” cover story in 1997, the former “twentysomethings,” now called “Generation X”) were “flocking to technology start-ups.” During the dot-com boom of the Nineties (1994-2003), Reconstructionists founded the following websites, publications, and services.

1963 [honorary Recons]
Larry Augustin — open-source software pioneer, SugarCRM, Geeknet, SourceForge

1964

Jeff Bezos — Amazon

Halsey Minor — cofounder, CNET

Michael Hirschorn — cofounder of Inside.com [an honorary OGXer]

1965

Michael Dell — Dell Computer

Michael Tiemann — open-source software pioneer, Open Source Initiative, Embedded Linux Consortium, authored the GNU C++ compiler

1966

Jimbo Wales — Wikipedia

David Filo — cofounder, Yahoo!

Niklas Zennström — cofounder, Skype, Kazaa, Joost

Chris DeWolfe — MySpace

Matt Drudge — The Drudge Report

Joi Ito — Creative Commons, Technorati

Nick Denton — Gawker Media, parent company for Gawker, Fleshbot, Gizmodo, io9, Kotaku, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Jalopnik, Jezebel. Also founded Idolator, Gridskipper, Wonkette, Valleywag, Consumerist, Oddjack, Screenhead, Sploid, Defamer

1967

Pierre M. Omidyar — eBay

Peter Andreas Thiel — co-founder, PayPal. An early investor in Facebook.

Col Needham — Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

John Battelle — The Industry Standard

1968

Philip Rosedale — Linden Lab (Second Life)

Larry Sanger — cofounder, Wikipedia

Sabeer Bhatia — co-founder, Hotmail

Eugene Volokh — Volokh Conspiracy

Steven Berlin Johnson — cofounder, Feed

Jerry Yang — cofounder, Yahoo!

Jamie W. Zawinski (jwz) — open-source software pioneer, Mozilla, XEmacs, early versions of Netscape Navigator

Jessamyn West — Librarian.net, MetaFilter moderator

1969

Caterina Fake — cofounder, Flickr

Joshua Micah Marshall — Talking Points Memo

David Sifry — Technorati

Linus Torvalds — open-source software pioneer, created the kernel for the GNU/Linux OS

Rebecca MacKinnon — cofounder, Global Voices Online

1970

Jay Adelson — co-founder, Digg

Jason Calacanis — cofounder, Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs Inc.

Ethan Zuckerman — cofounder, Tripod.com; founder of Geekcorps; cofounder, Global Voices Online

1971

Carl Steadman — cofounder, Suck

Markos Moulitsas — Daily Kos

Marc Andreessen — co-founder, Netscape

Jim VandeHei — cofounder, Politico

Heather Havrilesky — Suck columnist

1972

Evan Williams — cofounder, Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter

Meg Hourihan — cofounder, Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger); co-founder, Kinja

Mark Abene — hacker Phiber Optik

Ana Marie Cox — editor of Suck, original Wonkette blogger

Matthew Haughey — founder, MetaFilter

1973

Sergey Brin — co-founder, Google

Larry Page — co-founder, Google

Xeni Jardin — BoingBoing

Jason Kottke — Kottke

Stewart Butterfield — cofounder, Flickr

Drew Curtis — Fark

Brian Behlendorf — open-source software pioneer, primary developer of the Apache Web server,

1974 [honorary Recons]
Paul Bausch — co-creator of the weblog software Blogger, developer at MetaFilter

***

FWIW, the one music genre pioneered by Reconstructionists (gangsta rap, new-school and alternative hip hop, grunge, nu metal, alt-rock were developments of music genres pioneered by Boomers and OGXers) is electronic/techno music.

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