I’m, variously, a writer/content generator, pundit, humorist and songwriter based in Newton Centre, Mass.
Here’s some highlights and sundries from my writing career to date:
- Editor of Byte.com (the web-only version, after CMP bought Byte from McGraw-Hill and killed the print edition), May 1999-October 2001, where the unwritten fifth bullet point in my job description was keeping Chaos Manor columnist Jerry Pournelle happy. Here’s my farewell editorial & swan song (which didn’t get published on the site).
- Author of one of the first user-oriented books about the Internet, The Internet Guide For New Users, in 1994. I had a lot of fun researching and writing this book, but, in retrospect, should have done it somewhat differently. Ah well.
- Founding editor of Internet World magazine (which makes me the first editor of a magazine all about the Internet). I was in charge for its first year-and-a-half as a magazine (and its previous year as a newsletter).
- Creator of The Internet Paper Airplane, containing “Everything you need to know (enough, anyway) on a Single Sheet of Paper!” (back in the mid-1990s,) along with showing many design sins commitable using Word.
- Presented the first speech to use the phrase “Hamburger All over the Information Superhighway”, (with several nods to the Firesign Theatre, of course), at the DCI Internet Expo (December 1995). I was also the first person to do a session about the Internet at Fall COMDEX.
- Writer of humorous song parodies about the Internet and Unix.
- Worked at Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN), 1983-1988, where I learned a lot about the Internet, the ARPANET, and Unix.
- At Prime Computers, wrote my first funky computer manual, complete with original artwork, “The New Users Guide to EDITOR and RUNOFF”.
- Music/book reviewer (mostly folk and singer-songwriters) for the still-going and long-gone pubs like The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, Pickin’, and SingOut.
- Song lyrics performed in Carnegie Hall (in its smaller Weill Recital Hall, rented out by my friend, composer Bruce Kushnick, for the occasion).
And yes, I’m that Dern who ran Thursday (the alternative student newspaper) at MIT, lived at Bexley, and went to Clarion/73, and SAAC (fellow alums, join the CampSAAC list), speaking of the past).
I am NOT related to Bruce or Laura Dern, nor am I, not related to, any of the several other Daniel Derns out there.