Richard Pandiscio's Thirty To Watch - prominent people in computer, software industry

Interview, Oct, 1999 by Jessie Scanlon

Paul Vixie If you have ever sent e-mail, you owe Vixie a debt of gratitude - he wrote one of the underlying codes that enables every packet on the Net to reach its destination. These days, Vixie runs the Realtime Blackhole List (http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/>Realtime). This blacklist of internet service providers (ISPs) that are soft on spammers is read by network managers across the country. In other words, Vixie has the power to bring the Microsoft Network to its knees.

Eric Zimmerman Gamers think he's too into cultural theory (he teaches at New York University, Columbia, and Parsons). Academics think he's tainted by commercial games (he cofounded and recently left Flat, a game developer and Web design studio). As the organizer of RE:PLAY, an online forum (www.eyebeam.org/replay) and real-world conference (in New York next month), the twenty-nine-year-old Zimmerman is leading the conversation about just what computer games are - culturally, commercially, and technically.