Jason Benlevi has spent the past decades as a marketing communications guru working with the leading technology companies in Silicon Valley and beyond selling the dream of a digital life. Now he has taken a critical look at the sum of the parts that have been created and questions whether the dream has been created for all, or whether it is just a new package for the same-old powers-that-be to exploit the rest of us.
Jason found himself channeled into the sciences by the launch of Sputnik - until intersecting with the twin evils of geometry class and the Vietnam War. From that point forward Benlevi was on a different course, one that ultimately won him the disaffection of the L.A. school system and an escape to the San Francisco Bay Area. Living a dual academic life in film school and computer labs, Jason authored what was probably the first feature film about computer hackers, well in advance of anyone in Hollywood having the vaguest idea what he was talking about. This was years before War Games and Sneakers (which no one remembers anyway.)
Deciding that he couldn’t live on art alone, or afford the gadgets he desired, Jason became involved in advertising, where creative ideas are sent to die, but at least the artists and writers get paid. The timing was fortuitous since he was among the few creative individuals who actually enjoyed talking to computer engineers and could translate what their talk into language that any normal TV-watching, newspaper-reading individual could understand.
While working at the will of the world’s leading technology companies, he blogged under many aliases about politics, culture and technology. Now he has summoned the courage and recklessness to put a name to his work…and an end to his career.
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