Alan Gore

Alan Gore was born in Manchester, UK, grew up in southern California and, after a few years of work in Japan, has resided in the Phoenix area for the last 22 years. Alan has been in IT since 1965. (His first computer was an IBM 1410 on the campus of University of California, Irvine. None of you young whippersnappers will remember punched cards, but he claims to be one of the few people left in IT who remembers that a full generation before the great progressive thinkers of our field hated Microsoft, they hated IBM, and for all the same crappy reasons.) In 1991, says Gore, he actually benefited from the first wave of outsourcing, when employees were replaced by contractors. He went independent back then, and within a few years made a lot more money than before. "This time around," he says, "The only way I will be able to make more money is to buy my own Third World country. Can I have California when the Democrats are finished with it?"