Joe Firmage
Encyclopedia
Joseph Firmage is an American
Internet
entrepreneur. He founded several business ventures prior to and during the dot-com boom and currently is involved with two closely linked organizations: ManyOne
Networks, of which he is CEO, and the Digital Universe
Foundation, of which he is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors.
, where his father was a law professor, on a physics
scholarship but only stayed through his sophomore year. In 1989 he started his first company, Serius, which grew out of a Macintosh program he had written for his mother's greeting card business. Serius produced developer tools for object-oriented programming
. The company received funding from several sources, including Novell
, which ultimately bought Serius for $24 million in 1993. Its product then became the basis for AppWare
, while Firmage became vice president of strategic planning for Novell's NetWare
division.
Firmage left Novell in 1995 when the company decided to focus its business on networking products. (Later, Firmage would explain the departure as a disagreement over Novell's strategy in selling its Unix
licensing rights and a failure to compete with Microsoft
in the network operating system
market.) His brother, Edwin J. Firmage, started a new company, Network Multimedia, to buy the AppWare technology back from Novell. The product was eventually renamed Microbrew, but the company disappeared after a few years.
Meanwhile Firmage, together with two other former Novell executives, Toby Corey and Sheldon Laube and two other outside executives, Jim Heffernan and Ken Campbell, also founded USWeb
during this period. Originally a Web design
company, USWeb grew with a series of acquisitions into an Internet consulting firm, following a strategy of buying businesses with expertise in corporate intranet
s and extranet
s. USWeb stock became publicly traded in December 1997, as the company sought to achieve critical mass in an atmosphere Firmage acknowledged was an Internet bubble.
With Firmage as CEO, USWeb continued its expansion and ultimately merged with a rival Web consulting firm, CKS Group
. Firmage was originally announced as CEO of the merged company, but was replaced by Robert Shaw in November 1998 while the merger was under way. Initially Firmage took the title of chief strategist, then left the company in January 1999,[6] forced out (though with a generous severance package) because of corporate concerns about the extensive publicity generated by his campaign to prove the existence of UFOs--a campaign that led to him being nicknamed the Fox Mulder
of Silicon Valley (a reference to the television show The X Files).
. Firmage also related his own contact with an otherworldly figure, shortly before the USWeb IPO
, with whom he discussed space travel
. “...he has sunk more than $3 million into establishing Project Kairos
(after an ancient Greek word meaning "the right or opportune moment") to prepare mankind for aliens.” The book was published in 2001.
Tim Sebastian
of BBC
’s HARDtalk
interviewed Mr. Firmage about his alien encounter several years after publication of “The Truth”.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
entrepreneur. He founded several business ventures prior to and during the dot-com boom and currently is involved with two closely linked organizations: ManyOne
ManyOne
ManyOne Networks was an Internet services company headquartered in Los Gatos, California that declared Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on October 12, 2009. With technology purchased from the original company, a new ManyOne began operations on Sept. 13, 2011...
Networks, of which he is CEO, and the Digital Universe
Digital Universe
Digital Universe is a free online information service founded in 2006. The project aims to create a "network of portals designed to provide high-quality information and services to the public"...
Foundation, of which he is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors.
Early business career: Serius, Novell, USWeb
Firmage attended the University of UtahUniversity of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, where his father was a law professor, on a physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
scholarship but only stayed through his sophomore year. In 1989 he started his first company, Serius, which grew out of a Macintosh program he had written for his mother's greeting card business. Serius produced developer tools for object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming
Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...
. The company received funding from several sources, including Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
, which ultimately bought Serius for $24 million in 1993. Its product then became the basis for AppWare
AppWare
AppWare was a rapid application development system for Microsoft Windows and the Mac OS based on a simple graphical programming language. AppWare was developed by Joseph Firmage and marketed by Serius, a company started by Firmage in 1989...
, while Firmage became vice president of strategic planning for Novell's NetWare
Novell NetWare
NetWare is a network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, with network protocols based on the archetypal Xerox Network Systems stack....
division.
Firmage left Novell in 1995 when the company decided to focus its business on networking products. (Later, Firmage would explain the departure as a disagreement over Novell's strategy in selling its Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
licensing rights and a failure to compete with Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in the network operating system
Network operating system
A networking operating system , also referred to as the Dialoguer, is the software that runs on a server and enables the server to manage data, users, groups, security, applications, and other networking functions...
market.) His brother, Edwin J. Firmage, started a new company, Network Multimedia, to buy the AppWare technology back from Novell. The product was eventually renamed Microbrew, but the company disappeared after a few years.
Meanwhile Firmage, together with two other former Novell executives, Toby Corey and Sheldon Laube and two other outside executives, Jim Heffernan and Ken Campbell, also founded USWeb
USWeb
USWeb is currently an Internet marketing company going by the same name as the original USWeb of the 1990s. The original USWeb was founded as a web design and site engineering company which expanded during the dot-com boom into online strategy consulting and online marketing...
during this period. Originally a Web design
Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
company, USWeb grew with a series of acquisitions into an Internet consulting firm, following a strategy of buying businesses with expertise in corporate intranet
Intranet
An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...
s and extranet
Extranet
An extranet is a computer network that allows controlled access from the outside, for specific business or educational purposes. An extranet can be viewed as an extension of a company's intranet that is extended to users outside the company, usually partners, vendors, and suppliers...
s. USWeb stock became publicly traded in December 1997, as the company sought to achieve critical mass in an atmosphere Firmage acknowledged was an Internet bubble.
With Firmage as CEO, USWeb continued its expansion and ultimately merged with a rival Web consulting firm, CKS Group
CKS Group
CKS Group was an advertising agency based in Cupertino, California, catering to technology companies. The initials CKS came from the three name partners, Bill Cleary, Mark Kvamme, and Tom Suiter. All three had previously worked for Apple Computer...
. Firmage was originally announced as CEO of the merged company, but was replaced by Robert Shaw in November 1998 while the merger was under way. Initially Firmage took the title of chief strategist, then left the company in January 1999,[6] forced out (though with a generous severance package) because of corporate concerns about the extensive publicity generated by his campaign to prove the existence of UFOs--a campaign that led to him being nicknamed the Fox Mulder
Fox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
of Silicon Valley (a reference to the television show The X Files).
Extraterrestrial and astrophysics interests
Around the time of Firmage's departure from USWeb, word began to circulate about his belief in extraterrestrial intelligences, which was the subject of a book he wrote called "The Truth". Published online at www.thewordistruth.org, it contended that extraterrestrials had appeared on Earth periodically to help spur human technological advancement. For example, important elements of modern technology were explained as deriving from an alien spacecraft supposedly recovered from the 1947 Roswell UFO incidentRoswell UFO incident
The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
. Firmage also related his own contact with an otherworldly figure, shortly before the USWeb IPO
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
, with whom he discussed space travel
Spaceflight
Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...
. “...he has sunk more than $3 million into establishing Project Kairos
Kairos
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment . The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time in between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special...
(after an ancient Greek word meaning "the right or opportune moment") to prepare mankind for aliens.” The book was published in 2001.
Tim Sebastian
Tim Sebastian
Tim Sebastian is a television journalist. He is the moderator of the New Arab Debates and the Doha Debates, and was the first presenter of BBC's HARDtalk....
of BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
’s HARDtalk
HARDtalk
Hardtalk is a flagship BBC television programme, consisting of in-depth half-hour one-on-one interviews.It is broadcast four days a week on BBC World News and the BBC News channel. Launched in 1997, much of its worldwide fame is due to its global reach via BBC World...
interviewed Mr. Firmage about his alien encounter several years after publication of “The Truth”.
Pursuing these interests, Firmage founded a group called the International Space Sciences Organization. In October 1999, his organization was reportedly sponsoring a private meeting to discuss propulsion technologies in space, which attracted attention from a NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
investigator concerned that proprietary technologies might be discussed there.
Projects after USWeb
After leaving USWeb, Firmage's next business project was known as Intend ChangeIntend ChangeIntend Change was a consulting business launched in 1999 by Joe Firmage, Toby Corey, Wayne Tsuchitani, and Bruce Gilpin. Operating out of Palo Alto, California, it leased offices from USWeb/CKS, another consulting firm started by Firmage and Corey, where Corey was still chief operating officer...
, launched together with USWeb co-founder Toby Corey, and also supported by the investment of an undisclosed amount from USWeb itself. Intend Change also went into the consulting business, this time as an advisor to new Internet businesses seeking venture capitalVenture capitalVenture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
. In exchange for its services, Intend Change would take a ten percent equity stake in the client, which an analyst described as "pretty significant." The company did not plan to contribute any capital for these equity stakes, but Firmage and his partners indicated they might invest personal capital or help arrange funding with Intend Change's own venture capital partners. They also sought commitments from startups to set aside stock and dedicate it to charitable causes, saying they would donate half their equity in Intend Change to unspecified nonprofit agencies.
Prior to the dissolution of Intend Change in 2001, Firmage began working with Carl SaganCarl SaganCarl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
's widow, Ann DruyanAnn DruyanAnn Druyan is an American author and producer specializing in productions about cosmology and popular science. She made substantial contributions to the PBS documentary series, Cosmos, and was the wife of late scientist and educator, Carl Sagan.-Film career:Along with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter,...
, and her Cosmos Studios organization on a concept known as "Project Voyager," which would develop a web portalWeb portalA web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
focused on science-oriented entertainment. They raised $23 million for the project from the same venture capital firms that supported Intend Change. The site was launched in 2001 at www.onecosmos.net and emphasized the use of three-dimensional navigation3D computer graphics3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
over text hyperlinkHyperlinkIn computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
s. The venture planned to draw content from the Sagan-founded Planetary SocietyPlanetary SocietyThe Planetary Society is a large, publicly supported, non-government and non-profit organization that has many research projects related to astronomy...
while helping to support that organization and the SETI@homeSETI@homeSETI@home is an Internet-based public volunteer computing project employing the BOINC software platform, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence...
project in their other endeavors. However, it struggled to secure funding to remain operational.
Firmage founded ManyOne Networks in 2002 as the successor to OneCosmos with the intention to reshape the content landscape of the Web. With another $10 million raised from angel investorAngel investorAn angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
s, in 2005 he announced the purpose of ManyOneManyOneManyOne Networks was an Internet services company headquartered in Los Gatos, California that declared Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on October 12, 2009. With technology purchased from the original company, a new ManyOne began operations on Sept. 13, 2011...
: to create a "Digital UniverseDigital UniverseDigital Universe is a free online information service founded in 2006. The project aims to create a "network of portals designed to provide high-quality information and services to the public"...
", which he called "the PBS of the Web." This would consist of a number of subject-area portals, serving as "an ad-free alternative" to large portals such as AOLAOLAOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
or YahooYahoo!Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
. It would also partner with nonprofit organizations to sell Internet and Web services The first elements of the Digital Universe to emerge include the Earth Portal (http://earthportal.org) and its Encyclopedia of Earth (http://www.eoearth.org). Some have described it as WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
"with adult supervision."
Firmage has written extensively on “third millennium theories” of economics and physics. In 2006 Firmage released what may be the first "open source film" about the history of the Cosmos, Earth and human society called I Am Awakening. In pursuit of one of the film's motivations—to inspire children to seek peace in the Middle East—it has been translated into PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Arabic, Hebrew as well as SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. In May, 2008, the web site it had been on, IAmAwakening.org, changed ownership and the film was no longer there.
Return to USWeb
In October 2011, USWebUSWebUSWeb is currently an Internet marketing company going by the same name as the original USWeb of the 1990s. The original USWeb was founded as a web design and site engineering company which expanded during the dot-com boom into online strategy consulting and online marketing...
issued a press release saying that Firmage had rejoined the company, now called USWeb Central Worldwide, as the Chairman of its Board of Directors.
External links
- firmage.org, Firmage's website
- ManyOne Networks, Firmage's company
- Who is Joe Firmage? - interview from Utah Now on KUED
KUEDKUED is full-service Public Broadcasting Service public television located in Salt Lake City, Utah, broadcasting locally in digital-only on UHF channel 42. It is one of two PBS member stations serving the Salt Lake City, Utah metropolitan area...
, 18 May 2007- Untangling the Web - interview on RadioWest, KUER, 6 June 2007
- Inside Utah, December 1, 2006, About the Digital Universe.
- CNET interview of Firmage
- Salon interview of Firmage
- Encyclopedia of Earth.