Ivan Pope

Ivan Pope (born 1961) is a British technologist, involved in a number of early internet developments in the UK and across the world, including coining the term cybercafe at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was a founder of two of the first internet magazines, The World Wide Web Newsletter, and later .net magazine in the UK. In 1994 he founded Webmedia to professionalise the process of web site design and build. In 1995 he was involved with the creation of the domain name management company NetNames. Pope is now a writer and a noted proponent of the dérive. Pope was born in 1961, the son of Patricia Pirard, a French national, and Marius Pope, a south-African born journalist of Lithuanian Jewish descent. His younger brother is the photographer Pat Pope. After graduating from Goldsmiths College with a BA degree in Fine Art in 1990, Pope worked as an artist with Loophole Cinema for five years. The World Wide Web Newsletter (later 3W magazine) was created by Pope at Goldsmiths College Computer Centre early in 1993. The magazine was conceived as a general information source to promote internet use. The name was taken from the World Wide Web project of Tim Berners-Lee and the first issue was published in late 1993, reporting at the time: "there are under 100 web servers in the world". 3W opened up many opportunities and Pope left Goldsmiths College to concentrate on web development work. Pope attended the first London Internet World exhibition in 1994 as an exhibitor with 3W magazine. He was hired by Time Out magazine in London to consult on their early web development. During 1994 Pope was asked by Future Publishing to join the team working on the first consumer internet magazine, .net. He worked from the Bath offices of Future Publishing on the first issues as Assistant Editor and also wrote extensively for the magazine during the first year of its existence. Pope was asked to curate an internet component for an arts symposium held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in March 1994.