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Howard Rheingold is the author of best-sellers Virtual Reality, The Virtual Community, Smart Mobs, and Net Smart, as well as editor of best-seller The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog.

As Howard Rheingold himself puts it, "I fell into the computer realm from the typewriter dimension, then plugged my computer into my telephone and got sucked into the net." A writer and designer, he was among the first wave of creative thinkers who saw, in computers and then in the Internet, a way to form powerful new communities. In 1996, his website Electric Minds was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the ten best.

He's taught at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and De Montfort University in the UK; from the latter, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Technology degree. He's a frequent keynote speaker, and has appeared on major news programs across the globe.

He currently runs Rheingold U., a totally online learning community that teaches personal knowledge tools, network literacy, social media for educators, participatory media/collective action, introduction to cooperation studies, and attention skills in an always-on world.