James Gleick (/ɡlɪk/;[1] born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonfiction, he has been called "one of the great science writers of all time".[2][3] He is part of the inspiration for
Jurassic Park character
Ian Malcolm.[4]
He moved to
Minneapolis and helped found an
alternative weekly newspaper, Metropolis. After its demise a year later, he returned to New York and in 1979 joined the staff of The New York Times. He worked there for ten years as an editor on the metropolitan desk and then as a science reporter.
He wrote the "Fast Forward" column in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999, and his essays charting the growth of the Internet formed the basis of his book What Just Happened.
As a reaction to poor user experience with
procmail configuration at
Panix, in 1993 Gleick founded
The Pipeline, one of the earliest Internet service providers in New York City.[14] The Pipeline was the first ISP to offer a
graphical user interface, incorporating e-mail, chat,
Usenet, and the
World Wide Web, through software for Windows and Mac operating systems.[15][16]
Gleick and business partner Uday Ivatury licensed the Pipeline software to other Internet service providers in the United States and overseas. In 1995 Gleick sold The Pipeline to PSINet, where it was later absorbed into
MindSpring and then
EarthLink.[17][18]
Aircraft accident
On 20 December 1997 Gleick was attempting to land his
Rutan Long-EZexperimental plane at
Greenwood Lake Airport in
West Milford, New Jersey, when a build-up of ice in the engine's carburetor caused the aircraft engine to lose power and the plane landed short of the runway into rising terrain.[19] The impact killed Gleick's adopted eight-year-old son, Harry, and left Gleick seriously injured.[20][21]
Work
Gleick's writing style has been described as a combination of "clear mind, magpie-styled research and explanatory verve."[22]
After the publication of Chaos, he collaborated with photographer
Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at
Autodesk on Chaos: The Software.
His next books included two biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, and Isaac Newton, which
John Banville said would "surely stand as the definitive study for a very long time to come."[23]
In 2017 Gleick was elected president of the
Authors Guild.
James Gleick, "The Fate of Free Will" (review of
Kevin J. Mitchell, Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will, Princeton University Press, 2023, 333 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXI, no. 1 (18 January 2024), pp. 27–28, 30. "
Agency is what distinguishes us from machines. For biological creatures,
reason and
purpose come from acting in the world and experiencing the consequences.
Artificial intelligences – disembodied, strangers to blood, sweat, and tears – have no occasion for that." (p. 30.)