Background
Mark Stephens was born in 1953, in Apple Creek, Ohio.
Mark Stephens was born in 1953, in Apple Creek, Ohio.
College of Wooster.
He earned a bachelor"s degree from the College of Wooster in Ohio in 1975 and a Master"s degree in Communication from Stanford University in 1979, where he also pursued work toward a doctorate. He was employee #12 at Apple, Incorporated. Stephens was the third author to contribute to Infoworld under the Cringely pseudonym, the first two being Rory J. O"Connor and then Laurie Flynn.
The original column, the first computer "gossip" column, was started by Mark Garetz and called According to Garetz.
lieutenant was later taken over by John Dvorak. During Stephens" lengthy tenure (1987–1995), the character of Cringely changed dramatically (morphing from a private eye type to a slick, womanizing tech insider) and became an increasingly popular tech pundit after he published the book Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can"t Get a Date (1992, ).
After a financial disagreement in 1995, Stephens was dismissed from Infoworld and was promptly sued by Integrated Development Group to prevent him from continuing to use the Cringely trademark. A settlement was reached out of court that allowed him to use the name, so long as he did not contribute to competing technology magazines.
Consequently, Stephens" writing as Cringely regularly appears in publications such as Forbes, Newsweek, Success, The New York Times, Upside, and Worth.
Stephens has also appeared as Cringely in two documentaries based on his writings: Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996) and Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet (1998) and in a three-part documentary on Public Broadcasting Service called Plane Crazy, in which he attempted to build an aircraft in 30 days and fly it when completed. As Cringely, Stephens produced and hosted an Internet television show called NerdTV (2005-2006) for Public Broadcasting Service and, until late 2008, wrote an online column for the Public Broadcasting Service website called I, Cringely: The Pulpit. On November 14, 2008, Stephens announced that he would stop contributing columns to Public Broadcasting Service as of that December 15.
He indicated that the move was his own decision "and not that of Public Broadcasting Service, which has been nothing but good to me these many years".
He also blogged for the Technology Evangelist site during 2007. Today, his writings can be found at his own I, Cringely site and at Adam Smith"s Money World.
InfoWorld.com continues to publish the " Cringely" Notes From the Field column as a blog, written by technology journalist Daniel Tynan. Personal life They moved from Charleston, South Carolina to Santa Rosa, California around the end of July 2011.
In 1998, it was revealed that Stephens had falsely claimed to have received a Doctor of Philosophy from Stanford University and to have been employed as a professor there.
Stanford"s administration stated that while Stephens had been a teaching assistant and had pursued course work toward a doctoral degree, he had never held a professorship nor had he been awarded the degree. Stephens then stated that while he had received a master"s degree from the department of Communications and completed the classes and tests required for the Doctor of Philosophy, he acknowledged that he failed to complete his dissertation. Asked about the resulting controversy, Stephens told a reporter: " new fact has now become painfully clear to me: you don"t say you have the Doctor of Philosophy unless you really have the Doctor of Philosophy".