John Markoff

Markoff was a senior writer at The New York Times from 1988 until he retired at the end of 2016, based mostly in San Francisco and covering Silicon Valley; he also spent four years on the paper’s science desk, focusing on computer security and the social effects of information technology.⁠[1]

In 1993 he wrote the first New York Times article describing the arrival of the World Wide Web; the Computer History Museum describes him as the first journalist to write about the web in a national publication.⁠[1][2]

In 2013 Markoff shared the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting as part of a New York Times reporting team. In the 2013–14 academic year he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS).⁠[1]

On August 28, 2015, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the episode “a16z Podcast: Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff,” hosted by a16z’s Sonal Chokshi with Michael Copeland as a contributor. Starting from Markoff’s book Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, the episode discusses how people’s relationship with technology and machines is changing and how Silicon Valley itself — including the area where Markoff grew up — has changed.⁠[3]

Topics include the future of work for humans and robots, chatbots that hold children’s attention, and the implications of a possible breakdown of Moore’s Law — described on the show as “the wheels finally falling off of Moore’s Law” — and the episode closes with the argument that education is the foundation for a future in which humans and intelligent machines work together. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019, under the title “a16z Podcast | Talking Humans and Machines with NYT’s John Markoff.”⁠[3][4]

After retiring from The New York Times, Markoff was a CASBS fellow in 2017–18 and later a research affiliate of the center in 2018–20 and 2024–26. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and an affiliate fellow in the Presence Center at the Stanford School of Medicine; his research examines the events around Stanford in the 1960s that helped make Silicon Valley a center of innovation.⁠[1]

In 2022 Penguin Press published Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.⁠[1][2]

Besides The New York Times, Markoff has written for the San Jose Mercury News, The Nation, Byte Magazine, Pacific News Service and the San Francisco Examiner, and he is a former staff historian at the Computer History Museum. He has written six books about the technology industry; Machines of Loving Grace was published by HarperCollins’ ECCO imprint.⁠[2][1]