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- Birthplace/Hometown:
- Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Where do you live?
- Nashua, NH
- Married?
- Yes
- Children?
- Elaine and I are almost empty nesters. Our son, Tom, Jr., got married in May 2004 to Yani Wu of Taiwan — they're traveling the world right now...
Our daughter, Liz, is part of the class of 2006 at Boston University.
- Pets?
- There's the family dog (Teddie, a Keeshond), the hundreds of critters who live in the woods by our house — and the millions of fish, turtles, coral colonies, etc. that I visit in the Bahamas and Caribbean on my trips to Planet Ocean.
- What do you like most about your work?
- Opportunity to explore new worlds. The opportunity to discover, with clients and peers, where we are headed. The opportunity to provide and acquire significant insights. The opportunity to influence large groups of people. I love presenting, communicating new concepts, becoming one with my audience. I love (and hate) writing because it forces me to be honest — and to work out ideas.
- What are you most proud of professionally?
- The quiet respect I get from so many outside (and inside) Gartner.
- When you were six years old, what did you want to grow up to be?
- Twelve years old.
- How did you become an IT analyst?
- Gartner came after me in 1987. I turned Gartner down. I thought I could change Digital Equipment so I stayed. In 1993, I was ready and so was Gartner.
- How has IT personally changed your life?
- Google, email, Google, the web in general, Google and my PCs are part of my virtually unconscious behavioral repertoire.
- If you could not be an analyst, what would be your second career choice?
- I'd be teaching at a university somewhere. Or running my own small market consulting company. Or, last choice, serving on a few boards. Despite SOX.
- How do you spend your time when you're not working?
- Running, weight-lifting, chilling out, reading, traveling, taking pictures, scuba diving...
- Favorite vacation spot?
- Here are 3:
- Cannes. Circa 14 July, any year.
- 80 feet underwater, zooming with the (mild) current along Victory Wall, in the Bahamas (near Cat Key). More generally, on a live-aboard dive boat plowing warm waters somewhere in the Caribbean or the Bahamas. These boats take a dozen or so divers out for a week of almost non-stop diving. They cook, take care of your gear, get you to interesting dive sites, brief you on the site (and its dangers) and provide a (typically quite small) cabin to sleep in. You get in 4, 5 or 6 dives a day and spend a week (or more) visiting "Planet Ocean".
- The Balsams, Dixville Notch, NH. A world class restaurant, inn and ski resort.
- Ideal way to spend a free Sunday afternoon?
- Watching NFL football, finishing up the Sunday newspaper, fixing food...
- Do you play a musical instrument?
- No
- What musicians' work do you collect?
- Eclectic. Wynton (and Branford) Marsalis, Stacey Kent, Natalie Cole, Tony Bennett, Linda Rondstat, John Williams, The Brothers Gibb, Simon and Garfunkel, Tina Turner, Charlie Daniels and many, many others. I have several hundred albums on my Media Server at home. I have no more than a dozen albums from any one musician.
- How do you choose the books you read for pleasure?
- Deep Science, Adventure, Escape, History...
- Favorite Book/Author?
- This is my 2004 list of "best books":
- I recently finished Jeff Hawkins' new book, "On Intelligence" and I absolutely loved it. (Jeff co-founded Palm, among other things.) My formal academic background is in biopsychology, learning theory and the interaction of learning and biological constraints on behavior. I so relate to all the questions and issues and data and suggestions in Jeff's book! It's a great read. If you don't have a background in brain sciences, you can skip chapter 6 and still love the book.
- Tom Malone's "The Future of Work," published Spring 2004, is really insightful. There's a whole collection of academics at MIT and Harvard who seem to be of a similar school of thought to Tom's (I'm not sure who's the leader of this band) but their work is thought provoking, contentious, inspirational, futuristic — and, when viewed from an historical perspective from 2050, it's likely to be more right than wrong...certainly not 100% right but, like good Gartner research, right enough to serve as a key checkpoint for corporate executives.
- "Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II" by Robert Kurson. The typical non-fiction book about diving is either a technical tome or pretty poorly written — or both! This book is one of those rare gems that divers and non-divers can both enjoy. It reads very well, captures the human side of the divers' passion and beats Clive Cussler's heroics any day! (I am addicted to Cussler's junk novels. Good entertainment — a very viable way to while away some time in the coach section of a jet liner.)
- Andy Clark's "Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence" inspired me. Clark's argument around the adaptiveness of human behavior nicely compliments Hawkins' positions in "On Intelligence". (I personally believe Clark's position on the difference between humans and other animals is wrong but that's only a very minor part of the book.) Natural-Born Cyborgs forces you to think about people and technology in a different light.
- I reread Gladwell's "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" this year. The book is not a breakthrough piece of thinking. But wonderful writing, great illustrations and the story teller's gift combine to provide a few hours of illumination and inspiration.
- James Bradley's "Flyboys: A True Story of Courage" deserves special mention to the extent that it helped put the antecedents of World War II in the Pacific in better context.
- Favorite Movie?
- Too many...
- Is there a TV show you never miss?
- No. Besides, with a personal video recorder, I just record them and watch (some of them) later.
- Favorite Websites?
- NYTimes. Google. Amazon. San Jose Mercury News (Good Morning Silicon Valley), Runners World. Weather.com, mapquest.com, gartner.com
- Most prized personal possession?
- They're all ephemeral. What I prize and celebrate is people in my life. And you can't possess them. I also prize nature — the ability to go outside and commune with the world. You can't possess that either.
- Is this the best time in your life?
- Yes — because I'm always looking forward...
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Topics He Covers Include:
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How can we use IT to enhance the performance of individuals, teams and organizations |
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"Over the horizon" Disruptive Changes in IT |
Recent Accurate Predictions:
| Client-server as a development style would be surpassed by web-centric methods by 2000. [Circa 1997] |
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| The titanic 1990's battles for marketshare and revenue in communications and collaboration would end by 2000. [Circa 1996] |
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Tom Austin guided clients through the great communication and collaboration wars between IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Netscape, et al, in the 1990s. He also created Gartner?s coverage of Network Computing. He was appointed a Gartner Fellow in the first-ever group of Gartner Fellows to reflect industry recognition of his contributions, insight, energy and impact.
Education:
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B.S., Psychology, Georgetown University, 1970 |
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M.S., Biopsychology, University of Massachusetts, 1973 |
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Ph.D.-ABD, Biopsychology, University of Massachusetts, 1975 |
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