1971 Morristown High School yearbook photo of Craig Newmark, who would eventually start Craigslist, one of the most popular websites in the world.
MorristownGreen.com was able to land an up close and personal interview with Craig Newmark, the founder of "Craigslist," who is a native of Morristown and a Morristown High School alumnus. (class of 1971).
Newmark, who is 55 and a resident of San Francisco, went on to attend Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, got his computer science degree and became a computer programmer. He had an impressive career, which included stops at IBM, Charles Schwab, Bank of America and Sun Microsystems, before Craigslist required all of his time.
In 2005, he was named to the Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He spends much of his time on customer service issues at craigslist.org, blogging at cnewmark.com and advising various non-profit groups.
Newmark founded Craigslist.org in 1995. The web site provides a network of online communities while also featuring mostly free classified advertisements (jobs, real estate, personals, and more).
The site operates in hundreds of cities around the United States and over 50 countries around the world. With over nine billion page views a month, Craigslist.org is the 11th most popular American website and ranked 37th worldwide, according to Alexa.com. The privately held company had been estimated to be worth in the billions by numerous financial experts.
The following are 10 probing and pertinent questions directed at one of the most notable internet pioneers in the United States.
1971 Morristown High School yearbook photo of the Debate Team that includes Craig Newmark (seated in the center), who would eventually start Craigslist.
1. Before we get into life and politics, what are some of your fondest memories of growing up in Morristown, including graduating from Morristown High in 1971?
Newmark: I remember bits of it pretty well. I was a nerd. I worked on an IBM 1620 which Morristown High School provided, and programmed using Fortran II and punch cards. We could really do only simple mathematical things, but I learned a lot. I got a pretty good education at Morristown High. I was in the choir, and on the debating team, where I was led to dangerous illusions about the power of reason and logic (laughs). Logic and reason really aren't as important as intuition and experience.
2. When you look at the development of the internet over the last 20 years you can see that many businesses have been invented, and others have been completely wiped out. What do you think Craigslist, which provides free advertising, means for the future of printed newspapers?
Newmark: I am not really certain but we hear from them that our effect is minor but growing. Paper is just too expensive, but news organizations that do a good job will thrive. We need better fact checking than many people writing the news do. Fact checking is now regarded as an unnecessary luxury in some parts of the media. One of the things I am doing is working on supporting organizations that work on good fact checking. I work to give support to Factcheck.org, for example, which recently caught the McCain campaign lying, and then caught them again lying about lying.
3. As a technology adviser to Barack Obama, what do you think about the huge amount of money (more than $100,000,000) he was able to raise in small amounts (less than $100) through direct internet fundraising means to traditional power brokers and fundraising operations like political parties, labor unions and corporate lobbyists?
Newmark: That's one of the best expressions of democracy that we have ever seen in this country. It is the most honest form of public finance.
4. Who are the new political power brokers rising with the power of the internet, the webmasters? Graphic artists? Feel free to name names.
Newmark: This election is the beginning of a transition from top down power to bottom up power. It is unstoppable regardless of who wins, sort of an evolutionary development, like when cheaper printing presses helped pamphleteers like Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin foment the American Revolution.
5. Do you think aspiring politicians should study computer science, instead of say, Plato and Machiavelli?
Newmark: Politicians need to know how to stay in touch with their constituencies, and that means using the net.
6. Do you think we are moving away from representative democracy to participatory democracy?
Newmark: We are strongly moving forward toward participatory democracy as power devolves toward people who want to be involved. It is an evolutionary process and it is quite unstoppable.
7. Do you think internet voting is a good thing?
Newmark: I note that New Jersey is currently considering voting by mail right now. Internet voting is potentially a good thing when it is not subject to dirty tricks and is completely secure. We need lots of checks and balances.
8. Is the internet making our political culture better or worse?
Newmark: Overall better, but unfortunately it is a vehicle is for both good and bad. The dirty trick guys are indulging in a lot of racist behavior in this campaign . It is disturbing that some McCain supporters throughout the net, and on our discussions board at Craig's, routinely use the N-word.
9. Are more people impacting the decision making process, or, with all of the information is it easier for politicians to wait for temporary storms to pass?
Newmark: More people are having their voices heard, but having millions of people, even those with good ideas, involved in political campaigns, is sometimes overwhelming.
10. Will McCain, or Obama, carry Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio?
Newmark: I just don't know.
Paul Bangiola of MorristownGreen.com is a lawyer and is involved in Democratic politics.