View source for Howard Rheingold

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Howard Rheingold is a writer and teacher, specializing in modern communications media such as the Internet and mobile telephones, and the cultural, social and political implications of these new media. He is credited with inventing the term “virtual community.”

==Early life and education==
Rheingold was born in Phoenix, Arizona and attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, from 1964 to 1968.

==Xerox PARC and The WELL==
Rheingold's fascination with mind-altering and its methods led him in the early 1980s to the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Xerox PARC, where he had a chance to work on the earliest personal computers. This led to his writing Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology (1985), a history of the people behind the development of the personal computer.

In 1985 he joined The WELL, an influential early online community founded by [[Stewart Brand]] and [[Larry Brilliant]]. He explored that experience in his book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (1993). During that period he also wrote and published the book Virtual Reality: Exploring the Brave New Technologies of Artificial Experience and Interactive Worlds from Cyberspace to Teledildonics (1991).

==Whole Earth and HotWired==
Rheingold served a stint editing the Whole Earth Review, after which he served as editor in chief of the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog (1994).

He was then hired as founding executive editor of HotWired, one of the first commercial content web sites, created in 1994 by Wired magazine.

==Electric Minds, Brainstorms and Smart Mobs==
Rheingold left HotWired and founded Electric Minds in 1996, to chronicle and promote the growth of community online. The site was sold and scaled back in 1997.

In 1998 Rheingold created another virtual community, Brainstorms, a private webconferencing community which is still operating today.

In 2002, Rheingold published Smart Mobs, exploring the potential for technology to augment collective intelligence.

In conjunction with the Institute for the Future, Rheingold launched an effort to develop a broad-based literacy of cooperation.

==Recent Activities==
In 2008, Rheingold became the first research fellow at the Institute for the Future.

In 2008 he initiated the Social Media Classroom (SMC) and Collaboratory, funded by a HASTAC award. The SMC is an open-source Content Management System that provides teachers with an integrated set of social media for their courses, including forum, wiki, chat, blog and other functions. The Classroom also includes free curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos. Educators can either install their own version of the Colab, or apply for a hosted version.

Rheingold is a visiting lecturer in Stanford University's Department of Communication where he teaches two courses, "Digital Journalism" and "Virtual Communities and Social Media".

He is also a lecturer in U.C. Berkeley's School of Information. He previously taught a course on "Participatory Media/Collective Action", and now teaches one on "Virtual Communities and Social Media"

==Personal Life==
Rheingold lives in Mill Valley, California, with his wife Judy and daughter Mamie. He works in an office which is a converted garage, or outdoors when the weather allows. He relaxes by gardening, walking his dogs and creating art, include a large collection of brightly-painted shoes.

==External Links==
*Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rheingold
*Rheingold's personal website: http://www.rheingold.com
**About Rheingold: http://www.rheingold.com/howard
*Smart Mobs blog: http://www.smartmobs.com
*Rheingold's vlog: http://vlog.rheingold.com

==See Also==
*[[Howard's Stuff]]
*[[Mindamplifier]]

[[Category:People]]