Evan Ratliff (born c. 1975) is an American journalist and author. He is CEO and co-founder of '' Atavist'', a media and software company.Gillette, Felix
"Innovator: Evan Ratliff
''

Bloomberg Businessweek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'' (Jan. 20, 2011). Ratliff is a contributor to ''

Wired Magazine ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fr ...

'' and ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''. He has written one book and co-authored multiple others.

Career

Ratliff is one of the co-authors of ''Safe: the Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World''. His article "The Zombie Hunters: On the Trail of Cyberextortionists", written for ''

'' in 2005, was featured in ''The Best of Technology Writing 2006''. He is also the author of the book ''The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.'', which profiles the criminal

Paul Le Roux Paul Calder Le Roux (born 24 December 1972) is a former programmer, former criminal cartel boss, and informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In 1999, he created E4M, a free and open-source disk encryption software program for ...

"Vanishing" experiment

In August 2009, Ratliff and ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

'' magazine conducted an experiment, wherein Ratliff "vanished" as far as knowledge of his whereabouts. ''Wired'' offered a $5,000 reward for anyone who could find him before a month had passed. During the experiment, Ratliff remained "on the grid", communicating with his followers on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. The Google Wave development group proposed using the exercise as a

test case In software engineering, a test case is a specification of the inputs, execution conditions, testing procedure, and expected results that define a single test to be executed to achieve a particular software testing objective, such as to exercise ...

for the new technology pushing the frontier of real-time web activity. NewsCloud set up its Facebook application community technology to report on the story and enhance community behind the #vanish hash tag. Ratliff used a specially created blog to taunt his "hunters" and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

groups emerged to team up and find him, while other groups formed to help him remain at large. He eventually was tracked and found on September 8, 2009, in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

by @vanishteam, a group participating in the challenge to find him. Ratliff left a coded message — FaLiLV/tRD:aN/HA:aSaTS; TW—tRS/tEKAA/tBotV; FSF—TItN/tGG/tCCoBB; JC—LJ/HoD/aOoP; JM—JGS/MWS/tBotH — which has been translated to be the authors and titles of a variety of books.

References

External links

Detailed account of "Vanishing" experiment

"12 TO WATCH IN 2012: Evan Ratliff of The Atavist – Building Software to Tell Stories,"
''The Observer'' (January 18, 2012) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ratliff, Evan American male journalists Living people 1970s births Wired (magazine) people