I am quoted in Owen Thomas’ San Francisco Chronicle obituary for David Bunnell, a pioneering tech publisher who, along with his son Aaron, gave me my first journalism job at long-gone Upside magazine. He also stared PC Magazine, PC World, and Macworld; working at a pioneering early PC maker called MITS in New Mexico, he edited articles for company’s Computer Notes publication by Bill Gates and Paul Allen about their new company Microsoft’s version of the BASIC programming language. 

You can find other obituaries from Harry McCracken and Karen Wickre. Below are my own scattered thoughts upon learning of David’s passing.

Subject: Re: David Bunnell
From: Ryan Tate <ryan.tate@theintercept.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2016 13:24:50 -0400
To: "Thomas, Owen" <-redacted-@sfchronicle.com>

I had not. This news is devastating, and not just on a personal level,  but on a professional one as well, because it comes at a time when the technology sector needs more than ever the sort of humbling, irreverent, technically sharp journalism and satire that David pioneered. I saw all  of his work, especially at Upside, where I worked for David and his  late, remarkable son Aaron, as paving the way for to critical voices  against technological overreach and for publications like Valleywag and The Intercept, which extended the work he helped begin to cut through the zealous optimism and confidence games of Silicon Valley and thus help distinguish true innovation from banal corruption.

What was most brilliant about David, in my eyes, was that he always saw the essential humanity of the Valley, and the nitty gritty implications of technological change for ordinary people, even at times when the prevailing wisdom said that technology floated above, and apart from, mundane human struggles and foibles. This is someone who relentlessly tried to use computers and other innovations to improve the lives of the poor, who gave his own time and energy to help those less fortunate than himself, who was happy to speak the truth about large corporations, who was skilled at mocking self-important executives, and who fundamentally always wanted to bring the personal computing back to where it started o the ideals of a countercultural movement intended to empower those at the margins.

On a personal level, David='s work was a part of my life long before I met him. I subscribed to Macworld as a teenager and later, in college, was delighted to discover the cheeky online tech industry column he had commissioned from Tish Williams, who wrote Upside's “Daily Tish.”When I entered business journalism after college, the tech boom was in full swing, and the Bay Area was overflowing with reporter jobs, but I didn't consider applying anywhere but at Upside, where I had been freelancing for David’s son Aaron. When Aaron, all of 26, passed away, David helped pull the rest of us through the emotional devastation, and he did his best to shield us from the industry collapse the followed shortly thereafter. Long after Upside folded up shop, I would see David around Berkeley, and he would talk about his latest ventures, which involved innovations in health. He had my wife and over for dinner; another time we dined together at a local barbecue spot after finding we were both, by chance, enjoying an evening alone at the bar. Though I avoided the topic, I always sensed that Aaron's loss was an emotional blow from which David never fully recovered. And yet in a way he became warmer, and more alive, in the wake of that tragedy, especially after he had been away a good long while from the Silicon Valley hustle.

I will always be deeply grateful to David Bunnell, a man as loving as he was smart and as critical as he was awe-struck, who saw the potential of technology even as he recognized the emptiness of tech as an ends unto itself. As we are sucked ever more completely into electric screens and the global tangle of wires and radios that network them together,  I hope the rest of us learn to keep the world in perspective as well as he did.

> On Oct 20, 2016, at 12:43 PM, Thomas, Owen <-redacted-@sfchronicle.com 

 wrote:
>
> Ryan, you may have heard of David Bunnell's passing. Do you have any 

memories to share?
>