Jason Benlevi

Jason Benlevi has spent the past decades as a marketing communications guru working with the leading technology companies in Silicon Valley and beyond. As a creative director, speechwriter and scriptwriter for companies including Apple, Microsoft, Sun, HP, Sony, Sega and Cisco he has helped to sell the dream of the digital life. Now he has taken a critical look at the sum of the parts that have been created and questions whether the digital dream is being created for all, or whether it is just a new package for the same-old powers-that-be to exploit the rest of us.

Born in Brooklyn, New York and transplanted against his will at a young age to Southern California, he found himself channeled into the sciences by the launch of Sputnik and the L.A. Unified School District. It was a trajectory that was enjoyable until intersecting with the twin evils of geometry class and the Vietnam War (which did unsavory things through science.)

From that point forward Benlevi was on a different course, one that ultimately won him the disaffection of the L.A. school system and an escape to the San Francisco Bay Area. Living a dual academic life in creative arts/film school and computer geekiness, Jason authored what was probably the first feature film about computer hackers, well in advance of anyone in Hollywood having the vaguest idea what he was talking about. This was years before War Games and Sneakers (which no one remembers anyway.)

Back in the Bay Area, he was engaged in numerous creative ventures, but kept tinkering with electronics and computers. Deciding that he couldn’t live on art alone, or afford the electronics, Jason became involved in advertising, where creative ideas are sent to die, but at least the artists and writers get paid. The timing was fortuitous since he was among the few creative individuals who actually enjoyed talking to engineers and could translate what they were saying into language that any normal TV-watching, newspaper-reading individual could easily understand.

In past decades, while working at the will of the world’s leading technology companies, he has blogged heavily under many aliases about politics, culture and technology. Now he has summoned the courage and recklessness to put a name to his work…and an end to his career.