David Orban is an investor, entrepreneur, author, and analyst of the global high technology landscape. He was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1965.
Orban is the Founder of Network Society, which consists of several components including the think tank Network Society Research, the investment firm Network Society Ventures and the consulting arm Network Society Lab. He formulated the hypothesis, published as the Network Society Manifesto[1], that technology development sustains social change, and that a current wave of technologies is favoring decentralization
He is the author of a book, “Something New: AIs and Us” published in Italy by Hoepli under the Italian title "Singolarità" [2] which is about the role of artificial intelligence in society.
Orban is also an Advisor and member of the Faculty of the Singularity University,[3][4], and Founder and President of SingularityU Italy as well as an Advisor and former Chairman of Humanity+.[5]
He was an early adopter of blockchain technology, a Bitcoin investor since 2011, an Ethereum investor since its launch in 2014, and an advisor and investor in many blockchain projects.
Orban was Chief Executive Officer of Dotsub,[6] a US-based technology platform and services company that powers captions and translations as subtitles in any language in online videos to remove barriers to multi-cultural communications.[7][8][9]
Orban was a founder and previously Chief Evangelist of WideTag, Inc., the OpenSpime technology company, providing the infrastructure for an open Internet of Things.[10][11] Active in virtual worlds as well, he was the founder of Vulcano, one of the first and most active Italian communities in Second Life.[12][13]
Together with Tim O'Reilly, Lawrence Lessig, and others, Orban was one of the founders of the Open Government Working Group, which developed a set of principles of open government data in December 2007. Orban spoke at the Italian Parliament[14] about open government data policies in December 2008, calling for a wider adoption of transparent policies, and accountability, criticizing current legislation about freedom of information.
Orban is a frequent speaker at conferences and has given more than 100 keynote addresses and speeches worldwide for organizations including Cisco, Oracle, Roche, Ernst & Young, Accenture, Gilead, ENEL, Intesa, Banca Sella, Alphabet and talks at numerous events including TEDx Academy, Malta Blockchain Summit, the Web2.0 Expo in Berlin, the Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, PICNIC in Amsterdam, Virtual Worlds Conference (now Engage! Expo) in Los Angeles, SHIFT in Lisbon, Mobile Monday in Amsterdam. On July 28, 2009 he held a public lecture entitled "Internet Of Things - Spime Design Workshop"[15] at the Singularity University's inaugural Graduate Studies Program. He studied physics at the University of Padua and University of Milan.
References
edit- ^ "Network Society Manifesto".
- ^ "Singolarità".
- ^ "The explosion of too intelligent machines", Il Sole 24 Ore, 18 October 2007
- ^ "Intelligence: 2011, the machines will beat us", Focus, March 2008
- ^ "New members of the Board of Directors". Humanity+.
- ^ "David Orban appointed as dotSUB chief executive". TheStartupEU. March 2011.
- ^ "Straight to Video". Fast Company. February 2008.
- ^ "TED Crowdsources Translation of Its Talks,". Wired. May 2009.
- ^ "Open Translation Project: 15,000 translations and counting!". TED blog. February 2011.
- ^ "Italian Valley: L'internet delle cose". Wired Italia. May 2008.
- ^ "Spimes". IT Conversations interview by Phil Windley. 12 March 2008.
- ^ "The island of freedom", 2L Italia World, July 2007
- ^ "This is Italy in Second Life", Metro, 30 May 2007
- ^ "Parlamento 7 in condotta: chi è abilitato a legiferare su Internet?". "Comunicati-Stampa.net. December 9, 2008.
- ^ "Singularity University Blog: SU presents David Orban and "The Internet of Things"". KurzweilAI. July 27, 2009.