Bio: Art McGee
Art McGee is a communications, media, and technology
consultant with over 15 years of experience in the corporate
and non-profit arenas. He has worked with organizations such
as Project Change (AntiRacismNet), Media Alliance (San
Francisco), TAO Communications (now known as the
Organization for Autonomous Communications), the Center for
Third World Organizing (CTWO), the Black Radical Congress
(BRC), and the Institute for Global Communications (The
World's First Non-Profit Internet Service Provider), among
many others.
He is widely regarded as a legend of grassroots technology
activism and advocacy (at various times referred to as
"Johnny Appleseed," "Moses," and "The Father of Pan-African
Cyberspace"), and was the first person to explicitly
research and document African and African-descendent
sociocultural production and usage in virtual environments.
Out of this work came the first Pan-African guide to online
resources (a Yahoo and Google equivalent for it's time),
which subsequently inspired a growth in online activity by
African-descendents which is still being felt to this day.
His reputation is also due in no small part to the fact that
he was instrumental in the formation of some of the first
ethnically and culturally oriented virtual communities for
African-Americans, going back to the early days of dialup
bulletin board systems, proprietary commercial networks, and
other precursors to today's Internet.
He is currently the principal consultant with Virtual
Identity, a not-for-profit consultancy he founded, and a
member and co-founder of the emerging Media Justice Network,
a national coalition of grassroots activists and policy
advocates who are putting a race, gender, and class analysis
at the center of the movement to create a truly democratic
media landscape. He also serves on the Board of Directors of
the Online Policy Group, a research, policy, and advocacy
organization focused on equality in and equal access to
cyberspace; the National Advisory Board of the Community
Technology Centers' Network (CTCnet), an international
association of public-access computer and media technology
training centers; and is a member of the New Media Working
Group of Amnesty International, the world's premier human
rights organization.
In 2000, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by
Marketing Opportunities in Business and Entertainment (MOBE)
for his pioneering work as an "Influencer & Innovator of the
Internet and Technology." In 2001, he was named an
international "New Media Hero" by the Independent Media
Institute (AlterNet).
He is currently in the planning stage for a book and film
project that will explore African and African-descendent
people's relation to and engagement with technology from an
historical, contemporary, and futuristic perspective.
While the scope and influence of his work is international,
he physically resides in the Bay Area of California in the
United States of America.
You can send email to Art McGee at
amcgee@onlinepolicy.org
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