Alan I. Sipress

Bio: Alan Sipress is a newcomer to the technology team but not to tech. As a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia during the last four years, he saw how mobile phone text messaging is transforming politics. Activists from Indonesia to the Philippines press their social revolutions via SMS while cabinet ministers arrange media interviews the same way. In covering the 2004 tsunami that devastated Sumatra, Sipress discovered that local dial-up Internet had survived the disaster in Aceh even as the wall of water had leveled buildings and trees. Mobile communications linking remote, tsunami-struck islands were restored even before most boat and plane service. And while Cambodians are still rebuilding their society after years of war and genocide, Sipress found that WiFfi hotspots are making Phnom Penh, in some ways, an easier place to work than Washington.