Mark Pesce

• 1984. Working with Dr. Ken Weiss, Pesce wrote the firmware for the first version of the SecurID - now the global standard for access-control systems.

• 1986. Inspired by Ted Nelson's Literary Machines, Pesce founded Literature Systems, an early hypertext company, writing a complete hypertext system for Macintosh - years before HyperCard.

• 1988. Pesce joined the founding team at startup Shiva Corporation. Shiva invented 'dial-up networking' - allowing an individual at home or on the road access to office-network resources through a normal dial-up connection. Pesce developed the breakthrough Shiva Network Manager, creating the world's first easy-to-configure interface for an internet-connected device.

• 1991. Pesce founded Ono-Sendai Corporation, the world's first consumer virtual-reality startup, inventing an orientation sensor (US Patent 5,526,022) for low-cost virtual-reality applications licensed by Sega Corporation for their Virtua VR head-mounted display.

• 1994. Pesce co-invented the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) with Tony Parisi (Head of VR & AR at Unity Technologies) and Gavin Andresen (Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation), the first standard for interactive 3D graphics on the World Wide Web, and the ancestor of present-day Web 3D technologies, such as WebGL and WebVR.

• 1995. Working with World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Pesce founded and oversaw the growth of the VRML Architecture Group, a consortium of industry and academic stakeholders furthering VRML standards development.

  Also in 1995, New Riders Press published Pesce's international bestseller VRML: Browsing and Building Cyberspace. The book introduced hundreds of thousands of VRML enthusiasts to web-based 3D and virtual reality.

• 1996. With Emmy award-winning producer Jan Mallis, Pesce co-founded BlitCom, the first company to use VRML to deliver streaming 3D entertainment over the Web.

• 1998. Pesce founded the Graduate Program in Interactive Media at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, where he taught the next generation of creative professionals how to master emerging technologies for storytelling.

• 2000. Ballantine Books (Random House) published The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming Our Imagination. Linking today's interactive technologies with tomorrow's capabilities, The Playful World uses toys like Furby and PlayStation to map out the possibilities of the 21st century.

• 2003. Pesce was invited to Sydney to found a postgraduate program in Interactive and Emerging Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

• 2005. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation invited Pesce to become a panelist and judge on The New Inventors, a television series celebrating Australian inventors and ingenuity. For seven years, Pesce was a weekly guest in the nation's households.

• 2006. Working with Claxton Speakers International, Pesce began a career as a public speaker, delivering scores of talks every year, all around the world. Pesce's perceptive, engaging, and unique blend of storytelling empowers audiences, his clear, concise explanations leaving them well-equipped to understand and interpret the transformations and challenges of the connected world.

• 2007. Pesce was appointed an Honorary Associate in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney. He regularly lectures to students in both Media & Communications and the Design Computing programs.

• 2009. Pesce presented Hyperpolitics at the Personal Democracy Forum, the first work to outline the way pervasive connectivity would intersect with, interrupt, and amplify political power throughout the middle years of the 21st century. Hyperpolitics looked at the battles between Anonymous and the Church of Scientology to accurately predict the coming war between truth and 'fake news'.

• 2011. Pesce published The Next Billion Seconds, mapping the qualities and consequences of a world where everyone is 'hyperconnected' - sharing what they know, learning from what others have shared, and putting to work what they've learned via sharing.

• 2012. Pesce began consulting international banking union SWIFT, helping financiers and central bankers understand the implications of billions of smartphone-wielding customers. This led to continuing work with the World Bank through its SME Finance Forum, an initiative of the G20's Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion.

• 2013. Pesce founded MooresCloud, an Internet-of-Things startup bringing smart accent lighting into the home, designing, manufacturing, and shipping Holiday, a smart, app-controlled string of lights perfect for the Christmas Tree or any festive occasion. Pesce also designed and wrote the highly-praised mobile web software that made Holiday among the easiest-to-use connected devices ever created.

• 2014. Working with angel investor and longtime collaborator Jason Calacanis, Pesce launched This Week in Startups Australia, a podcast covering the stories, strengths, news, and successes of Australia's rapidly growing startup sector. Within twelve months, This Week in Startups Australia was Australia's #1 downloaded tech podcast.

  Also in 2014, Pesce led a day of testimony before the Australian Senate's Economic References Committee first-in-the-nation hearings on blockchain and digital currencies, teaching senators the basics of blockchain and distributed applications.

• 2015. Pesce began working with banks and fintech firms to harness the emerging capabilities of blockchain-based technologies to create financial products and services that are more open, more secure, and more resilient. Pesce guided Westpac - a 40,000-person organisation - into deep competency in blockchain 'thinking', running a highly successful hackathon for both Westpac employees and external vendors, delivering insight across the business.

• 2016. Pesce introduced Mixed Reality Service (MRS), a blockchain application creating a distributed, secure, scalable, global system mapping geospatial coordinates to web-based resources. MRS has uses across augmented reality, autonomous drones, business information systems, marketing, and OH&S.

• 2017. Pesce received an appointment at the University of Technology Sydney as Honorary Adjunct at their Animal Logic Academy. Pesce's expertise in both virtual reality and media production help the Animal Logic Academy postgraduate students achieve their academic and career goals.

  Also in 2017, in conjunction with Southern Cross Austereo and PodcastOne Australia, Pesce launched The Next Billion Seconds, profiling the individuals shaping the world of tomorrow. The next billion seconds (that's a bit more than 30 years) will be the most important in history - what can we know today to help us make better decisions about tomorrow?

  At the end of 2017, Meanjin published Pesce's The Last Days of Reality. The collision of Facebook's social-media profiling, amplified by artificial intelligence, delivered via augmented-reality spectacles, leads us to a soon-to-arrive future in which it becomes impossible to know what is true.

• 2018. Pesce trialled a world-first Professional Attention Token (PAT), creating a 'smart contract' as a new channel for professionals to sell their services.

  In March, Pesce won Best Columnist at the ACS IT Journalism Awards for his work with The Register.

  In May, The Next Billion Seconds won Best Technical and Scientific Podcast at the Australian Podcast Awards.

  Also in 2018, Mark began regular appearances on Radio New Zealand's Nine To Noon program - as their featured commentator on all things tech.

• 2019. Pesce won Best Columnist for the second year in a row at the ACS IT Journalism Awards for his work with The Register. He also served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Sydney's INCUBATE program, working closely with startup founders commercialising their research outcomes.

• 2020. Mark began regular appearances on the ABC Radio National Drive program, in their Tech Head segment.

  Pesce began a two-year partnership with IEEE Spectrum as a columnist, reaching half a million readers a month.

  Polity Press/Wiley published Augmented Reality: Unboxing Tech's Next Big Thing, Mark's eighth book.

• 2021. Pesce began writing a column for the newly launched COSMOS Weekly, the online edition of Australia's preeminent science magazine.

  In December, Pesce won Best Columnist - for the third time - at the ACS IT Journalism Awards for his work with The Register. Pesce retires from the competition.

• 2022. Pesce convened and facilitated the V20, an official G20 event that works to build bridges between virtual-asset service providers and regulators.

• 2023. BCS Publishing released Getting Started with ChatGPT and AI Chatbots: An Introduction to Generative AI Tools, Pesce's ninth book.

• 2026. Pesce launches Crossing the Watershed, detailing the collapse in the cost of cognition and what that implies for businesses and the economy.

Selected history

Explore the archive

Explore selected projects from Mark's career, from Labyrinth and the origins of the 3D Web to T_Vision and seven years on The New Inventors.

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