# Esther Dyson thanks us and makes fun of John Gage

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2002-09-27T09:56:41Z



Cool! I was officially recognized as a "Japanese digital entrepreneur/venture capitalist" by Esther Dyson! Saw this article today for the first time. (Thanks Frank!) This about the Fortune Brainstorming Conference I blogged about. I brought everyone the MELCO Airstation. It is the smallest 802.11b access point that I know of. Recently, all port-a-demo pitches in Japan of network technologies involve one of these little guys.
Esther Dyson - NYT Syndicate
The Wi-Fi Warrior
by Esther Dyson
distributed by the New York Times Syndicate - August 07, 2002

excerpt

THANKS FOR HELPING

The system worked flawlessly for me, but somehow Farber was having
trouble with it. Gage decided to "help" him. As you might expect, it was
only after Gage stopped "helping" that Farber got his laptop working,
and everyone was happy. (Sorry, John!)

Once online, Farber told our story to Joichi Ito, a Japanese digital
entrepreneur/venture capitalist who was joining us in Aspen for the
second conference, a far bigger affair. Ito promised to bring some
Japanese access points, much smaller ones, costing only about $150 each
from a company called Melco.

But the drama wasn't over. Now we had to persuade the organizers of the
next event to keep the line alive (at $500 per day). The normal price at
home would be no more than about $50 per month.

Somehow we succeeded. Gage brought his AirPort back and the next
conference was fully wired -- at least in the hotel basement.

Finally, for a third conference, at the Aspen Institute, I found yet
another unused DSL line. This time, I had my own device -- one of
Melco's Buffalo AirStations that Ito had brought. It came in a nice box,
covered in Japanese documentation that I couldn't read, and weighed only
about 6 ounces, just a third of the AirPort's weight.





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Joi's Diary, Wireless and Mobile