David Kirkpatrick (born January 14, 1953) is a technology journalist, author, and organizer of technology-oriented conferences. He is the author of '' The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World''. Published in 2010, Kirkpatrick's book chronicles the history of the company since its inception in 2004 and documents Facebook's global impact. Formerly Senior Editor of Internet and Technology at ''

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fate * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (19 ...

'' magazine, Kirkpatrick was until the end of 2022 the editor-in-chief of Techonomy Media Inc., a tech-focused conference company which he founded in 2011.

Journalism career

Kirkpatrick graduated from

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...

in 1975 with a degree in English, and also studied painting at the New York Studio School for Drawing, Painting and Sculpture for two years. He began his career with

Time Inc. Time Inc. (also referred to as Time & Life, Inc. later on, after their two onetime flagship magazine publications) was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New ...

in 1978 as a copy clerk while working as a video artist. (
video artwork
he co-produced was exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1978). In 1983, he started at ''Fortune'' magazine as a reporter, becoming a writer in 1989, and then began writing exclusively about technology in January 1991. From 2002-2008, he wrote a weekly tech column called
Fast Forward
" Kirkpatrick also developed and hosted Fortune's Brainstorm conference, an annual gathering in Aspen, Colorado, which began in August 2001. Brainstorm attendees during the conference's 5 years included President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

(who attended and spoke at the conference three times), Google founders

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...

and Sergei Brin, Sun Microsystems co-founder

Bill Joy William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO ...

, Senator

John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American statesman and United States Navy, naval officer who represented the Arizona, state of Arizona in United States Congress, Congress for over 35 years, first as ...

, FBI Director

Robert Mueller Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013. A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served a ...

, ecologists

Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure fo ...

and

Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US Nation ...

, Under-Secretary of Defense

Paul Wolfowitz Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (born December 22, 1943) is an American political scientist and diplomat who served as the 10th President of the World Bank, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, and dean of Paul H. Nitze Scho ...

, Former Supreme Court Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O' ...

, and venture capitalist

John Doerr L. John Doerr (born June 29, 1951) is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the ...

. Kirkpatrick has written profiles of

Jack Dorsey Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American businessperson, who is a co-founder of Twitter, Inc. and its CEO during 2007–2008 and 2015–2021, as well as co-founder, principal executive officer and chairman of Block, Inc. (deve ...

and

Sean Parker Sean Parker (born December 3, 1979) is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, most notable for co-founding the file-sharing computer service Napster, and was the first president of the social networking website Facebook. He also co-foun ...

in '' Vanity Fair'', and writes articles about technology and society for ''Forbes'' magazine. He is regularly ranked one of the world's top technology journalists, and has been a member of the World Economic Forum's International Media Council, consisting of 100 global media leaders, since 2006, as well as a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.

''The Facebook Effect''

After meeting Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

in September 2006, Kirkpatrick began writing frequently about Facebook in ''Fortune''. In January 2008 Zuckerberg agreed to cooperate on a book about the company. Kirkpatrick left ''Fortune'' in August that year to begin work on the book, which was published in June 2010. The ''New York Times'' best-selling book is the only profile on which Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have officially cooperated, and is a best-seller in countries including Taiwan, Japan, and China. It has been published in 32 languages, including Vietnamese, Croatian, and Catalan.

Techonomy

Since leaving ''Fortune'', Kirkpatrick has continued to host and program conferences. He established Techonomy LLC in 2010, which segued into

Techonomy Media Techonomy Media Inc. is an American conference and media company founded in 2011 and headquartered in New York. Techonomy organizes the annual invitation-only thought leadership Techonomy conference. Background Techonomy's name combines "techn ...

in 2011. It focuses on the impact of technology on business, economics, and society.

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

Media invested in Techonomy Media in July 2011. The company's mission is "to illuminate the connections between technology, innovation, economic growth, and social equity," and its annual Techonomy conference aims to provide a forum for leaders and innovators in tech and other industries to discuss the possibilities and implications of rapid technological acceleration. Participants at the conferences have included

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

Jeffrey Katzenberg Jeffrey Katzenberg ( ; born December 21, 1950) is an American media proprietor and film producer. He served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, a position in which he oversaw production and busin ...

Marissa Mayer Marissa Ann Mayer (; born May 30, 1975) is an American business executive and investor who served as President (corporate title), president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017, when it was sold to Verizon. She was a long-tim ...

Marc Benioff Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. Benioff is best known as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the software company Salesforce, as well as being the owner of ''Time (magazine ...

, and

Dan Hesse Daniel R. Hesse (born c. 1953) is the former chief executive officer of Sprint Corporation. In January 2016, Hesse joined the board of directors for PNC Financial Services where he chairs the Technology Subcommittee. He was elected to the bo ...

. Techonomy Media also publishes editorial content, including video journalism, on its website. Since 2012 the company has separately held an annual conference in Detroit to address competitiveness, jobs, and the urban future in an age of technology.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kirkpatrick, David American technology writers American male journalists Amherst College alumni 1953 births Living people Writers from St. Louis Journalists from New York City