Joichi Ito is the founder and CEO of Neoteny, an IT investment and operating company based in Tokyo. Ito is the chairman of the board of Creative Commons and the chairman of Six Apart Japan. Ito is also on the board of Technorati, Digital Garage, WITNESS, Pia Corporation, Socialtext and iCommons. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage, and Infoseek Japan. In 1997, Time magazine ranked him as a member of the CyberElite. In 2000, he was ranked among the "50 Stars of Asia" by Business Week and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT. In 2001, the World Economic Forum chose him as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow" for 2002. In 2003, Wired magazine named Ito one of eight "connectors," "the hypernetworked nodes who secretly run the world." In 2004, he was named to the board of ICANN and in 2005, he joined the board of the Mozilla Foundation. Ito was also a founding board member of Ex'pression College for Digital Arts as well as the Zero One Art and Technology Network. |