Feature Articles » Dream Jobs 2004

John Gage: He IS The Network

Age:

60

What He Does:

Travels the world discovering new technology and problems awaiting solutions

For Whom:

Sun Microsystems Inc.

Where He Does It:

All over the world

Fun Factors:

Sets his own agenda; visits every corner of the globe; meets the smartest people around, from technical geniuses to political leaders

Leaning against a grimy, graffiti-covered wall in Berkeley, Calif., John Gage is deep in conversation with a couple in business dress. I'm a little early, but Gage motions for me to join them. He briefs me while I'm dragging over a chair—his other guests have a plan for getting high-speed Internet access into low-income housing projects nationwide. Gage explains that I'm from the IEEE, which triggers a brainstorming session about what role IEEE engineers could play in their effort.

When the pair leave, Gage, without skipping a beat, begins describing a Nortel product he just saw at the International Telecommunication Union conference in Geneva. The IEEE 802.11-based device, the size of a Pringles potato chip can, self-configures into a wireless network. Gage speaks rapidly, in a low voice, excited by the possibilities. "The thing can find its own network," he says. "So I figure, you can put one in all the Coke machines in the world, because vending machines have power supplies. And you put them in the townships of South Africa, which lets you get telephony."

"We could wash entire neighborhoods with it," he goes on. "You could get the governments involved—like Thailand. The new minister of information and communication technology is planning to say that the government will provide to every inhabitant of Thailand around 10 megabits of sustained broadband at some low price. So with national initiatives, there would be a market."

Globe-Trotter:: John Gage is director of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems Inc.— but he doesn't even have an office.

Listening to Gage is a wild ride with leaps, bounds, and hairpin turns. He knows what technologies are incubating, and what the specific technical needs are around the world. As he talks, the connections between the two light up like a switchboard in San Francisco after an earthquake.

This, in fact, is what Gage does for a living—making connections between disparate people and technologies. His company, Sun Microsystems Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif., has a slogan: the network is the computer. Within Sun, Gage is the network.

Gage's title is director of the Science Office, but that doesn't mean much. There is really no science office. There is only Gage, on the road with his laptop and his cellphone, gathering and dispersing ideas, the Johnny Appleseed of the Information Age.

Gage went to college for a long time, at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard, in a variety of majors—mostly mathematics, but also economics, public policy, and mathematical economics, rarely completing a degree. He took time out from college, on and off, to travel in France, to serve as a 1968 convention delegate for presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, to help organize the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium, and to run the press bus for George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign.

But where he got his real education, he says, is through the IEEE. He joined as a student member and attended all the conferences he could. "When you go to conferences, you find out what the real issues are that are confronting people who are trying to solve problems," he says. Besides the IEEE, a huge influence on Gage has been Unix pioneer Bill Joy.

At Berkeley in the early 1980s, Gage was trying to complete a graduate degree in mathematical economics but was frustrated by the difficulty in printing papers with mathematical notations. Wandering around campus one day, he saw beautifully typeset mathematics displayed on a wall and set out to learn how it was done. The secret turned out to be an early application of Unix, presided over by Joy, then a graduate student acting as system administrator. Gage tapped Joy for an education in this new technology, and was so enthused about it that he left Berkeley (without finishing his degree) to join Joy at the 1982 founding of Sun.

Gage initially worked in technical support, marketing, and sales— the functions that involved Sun's interface with the outside world. Those responsibilities evolved into his current duties. Through his job, he has met such luminaries as Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations; Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada; French President Jacques Chirac; European Commission President Romano Prodi; rock star Bono; and the Dalai Lama.

Last year alone he traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, China, Japan, Holland, Italy, Spain, Jordan, Australia, France, Vietnam, Finland, Germany, Mexico, and Switzerland.

But his job isn't all jet-setting. He schedules days when he just sits in the Sun cafeteria and talks to people at random. "I table-hop," he says, "I say, 'Hi, what are you doing?' I'm a nice person; people like to talk to me. And it's valuable for them because I'll have picked up something related to what someone else is doing that they wouldn't know about."

While gathering ideas comes easily to him, follow-up is sometimes a chore. He forces himself to go back through his notebook and his e-mail regularly. "I'll sort [a message] by who sent it, then again by topic. New links will pop up," he says.

His job may seem scattered to someone who prefers to dig deep into one technology. But it suits him. "I'm a surfer, so I understand that there are forces greater than yourself; you need to capture those forces and stay with them. You discover that you can die if you don't."

What's next on his agenda?

"China," he says. "The dominance of China is inevitable. So my plan, in February or March, is to find a place to live in Beijing, work on my Chinese, and set up a series of meetings with the people organizing the Beijing Olympics, because that is a focal point driving the building of all China's telecommunications links. I'll talk with the telcos. I'll go to the universities."

If Gage weren't doing this for Sun, he'd be doing it anyway; he just couldn't stop. As he puts it, "I spend my time with the world's smartest people and can see—even feel—the impact of change on people's lives."

—Tekla S. Perry

By Photo: Terry Husebye