John Markoff is a senior writer for The New York Times, where he covers computer and technology issues. He is the author of The High Cost of High Tech, published by Harper & Row in 1985; Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, written with Katie Hafner and published in 1991 by Simon and Schuster; and Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw, written with Tsutomu Shimomura and published by Hyperion in 1996. He is completing a book on the history of events that led to the creation of the personal computer in Silicon Valley during the two decades leading up to 1975.
Among his many awards, Marketing Computers magazine in 2003 named Markoff one of the nation's most influential technology reporters. The New York Times has nominated him three times for a Pulitzer Prize.
Before joining the Times in 1988, Markoff worked for The San Francisco Examiner, Pacific News Service, Byte Magazine, Infoworld and the San Jose Mercury News. He received his undergraduate degree from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Oregon. He has taught at Stanford since 2002.