Dear John C. Dvorak,

I’ve been following you since I was reading your columns in the 1990s, back when computer magazines were thick enough to stop a small-caliber bullet and the Internet still felt like something we were all sneaking into after midnight.

And somehow, through all of it, there you were.

Columns. Television. Radio. Podcasts. Shows appearing, disappearing, changing names, changing networks, getting cancelled, getting resurrected, and occasionally somebody apparently deciding that perhaps having John C. Dvorak on their program had been a terrible mistake.

Then, inevitably, you’d turn up somewhere else.

You were never the polished spokesman for the technology industry. Thank God.

You were more like the Hunter S. Thompson of computer journalism, except instead of driving through Nevada loaded on controlled substances with a suitcase full of drugs, you were driving through Silicon Valley loaded on skepticism with a suitcase full of press releases you clearly did not believe.

Everybody else would announce:

**THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.**

And somewhere, John C. Dvorak would be sitting there going:

“No it doesn’t.”

Sometimes you were right.

Sometimes you were spectacularly wrong.

But that was half the fun.

Because you actually had an opinion.

Technology journalism desperately needed that. It still does.

You weren’t standing politely behind the velvet rope waiting for Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Google, or whoever happened to be running the industry that year to hand you the approved talking points.

You were wandering around behind the stage looking at the wiring and asking why the hell anyone built it this way.

That made following technology considerably more entertaining.

For decades, the entire industry has operated on hype, predictions, revolutions, disruptions, paradigm shifts, next big things, and products that absolutely positively will transform human civilization until approximately eighteen months later when everyone quietly stops talking about them.

You supplied the necessary chaos.

The skepticism.

The contrarian argument.

The occasional completely insane prediction that made you yell at the page, television, radio, or podcast.

That is what made it good.

There has always been something comforting about knowing that somewhere out there, while the rest of the technology press is applauding the newest shiny object, John C. Dvorak is probably staring at it suspiciously.

I followed you through the magazines, the shows, the ups, the downs, the cancellations, the arguments, the predictions, the victories, the misses, and the endless changing landscape of an industry that reinvents itself every five minutes.

And after all these years, you’re still unmistakably you.

That might be the most impressive accomplishment of all.

The technology changed.

The media changed.

The Internet changed.

Journalism changed.

But Dvorak remained Dvorak.

And for a kid reading computer magazines in the 1990s who never completely stopped being fascinated by this ridiculous industry, that has been one hell of a ride.

Thanks for all the chaos.

With admiration from somewhere out here on the old Internet,

**Dan**
**nitetime.net**