David Kirkpatrick, senior editor, internet and technology at FORTUNE, specializes in the computer and technology industries, as well as in the impact of the Internet on business and society. He writes a column which appears weekly on fortune.com and through e-mail subscription.

Kirkpatrick joined Time Inc. in 1978 while working as a video artist, and started at FORTUNE in 1983. In 1991 he began covering the computer beat. In 1990 his story "Will You Be Able to Retire?" was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in the personal service journalism category. He has written cover stories on Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel Sun, and numerous other topics including bogging. Marketing Computers regularly ranks him among the top five most influential technology journalists in the country.

Kirkpatrick has appeared frequently as a technology industry expert on CNN and PBS. Working with other FORTUNE editors, he developed and hosts Brainstorm, a multi-disciplinary conference which brings together global leaders to interact and discuss the future. The conference, first held in 2001, takes place annually in Aspen and is produced in partnership with the Aspen Institute.

Kirkpatrick has a B.A. in English from Amherst College, and attended art school for two years.

Blog Entries by David Kirkpatrick

iMeme Q&A

Posted July 10, 2007 | 04:55 PM (EST)


This week, a select group of leaders and innovators in technology will come together to share the ideas they consider the digital memes driving the future at FORTUNE iMeme: The Thinkers of Tech.

Topics at the invite-only conference -- ranging from the purely technological to the...

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At Davos: Citizenship, Apostasy and $100 Laptops

Posted February 2, 2007 | 10:25 AM (EST)


I was sitting in a session at Davos idly doing e-mail when I suddenly slapped my laptop closed and listened, amazed. Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, on stage, was asserting that global warming doesn't much matter, that Al Gore deliberately omitted contradictory information from his movie "An Inconvenient Truth," and...

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Nestle CEO Pooh-Poohs Global Warming Fears

Posted January 27, 2007 | 07:34 PM (EST)


From Fortune.com

Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe claimed in Davos Friday that global warming is not really a problem. He didn't use those exact words, but he said as much in a number of amazingly iconoclastic comments he made on a panel at the World Economic Forum devoted to...

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Getting a Second Life in Davos

Posted January 27, 2007 | 05:57 PM (EST)


From Fortune.com

I'll reiterate what I said in a feature story I wrote for the current issue of Fortune - Second Life is important not because it resembles a game, or because of how many people are signing up, or the big companies starting to do business inside...

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Fear of Flying

Posted January 26, 2007 | 01:38 PM (EST)


From Fortune.com

Flying by jet may become uncool. I'm concluding that based on early signs I've picked up this year at the WEF in Davos. When you fly, you become a polluter. And for the first time, that reality may be sinking in.

Last night at a meeting...

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