FoundSF

Historical Essay

by Paulina Borsook, 2026

Peter G. Neumann

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

I can't stop thinking about it and I don't know how to write about it.

It being the May 2026 death of august revered beloved computer scientist/computer security expert Peter Neumann at the age of 93. We were not friends; we met or talked just a few times in my role as technology journalist. But with some people, you just know: how warm, how deeply humane, how deeply wise, how deeply deep --- and a given, how brilliant.

A friend attended Neumann's memorial service in person (I logged in via Zoom) and among the holy relics on display for people to take as souvenirs of Neumann's life was a copy of Cyberselfish, as comped by Public Affairs, the book's original publisher. Neumann had folded in a few reviews into the well-preserved first edition.

He was the farthest thing from being a "founder" in today's loathsome AI robot sense. He trusted research, not corporations. Yet he was an actual founder of computer-security projects and institutions, with maybe the most well-known being the Association for Computing Machinery Risks Forum newsgroup, where people reported in on the ways computers can go bad.

You could say running Risks was an act of caritas and empathy, a cataloging of harms that people should watch out for.

He was a prince among men, a mensch, all those words which mean someone deeply good. More than one grown man wept while standing on the memorial-service dais. He was a mentor, a loving family-man, a secular saint, no other way to put it. He anonymously donated $4 million to the chorus of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), a gift which among other things gave the chorus an endowment. Somehow it seems typical of his great good character that he wanted the union-musician choristers, as well as SFS staffers, in on the discussions of the charitable gift.

Too many declarative sentences are in what follows, but I don't know how else to say what should be said. This chief scientist at the SRI thinktank-industrial lab embodied agape and philia. He worked for and believed in the sanctity and security of voting. It figures: he started his career working for 10 years at Bell Labs, another great entity dead, departed, and the like of which we will never see again.

He was one of Aristotle's great-souled men.

But now we have Zuck, Marc Andreessen, the Paypal Mafia, and the ignorant armies of AI clashing by night. Artisan AI (no really, that's its name) is the company which placed billboards all over San Francisco demanding "Stop Hiring Humans" and "Fire Steve/Hire Ava." Part of its mission statement: "Constantly apply pressure, be impatient, and strive for speed. This is a race."

Cultural institutions are shutting down or cutting back all over the Bay Area. Art isn't productive or efficient except perhaps as an asset class in an a well-diversified portfolio. Artspaces are disappearing into highest and best real estate use. Philanthropy is distasteful and pitiable and so last century; Neumann would now be considered a fool.

This is hell and we are in it.

As Steve Rappaport, a friend of forty+ years wrote in an email:

"When you think about it, what did they do besides ruin responsible media, shift advertising dollars to themselves, screw up entire generations, and establish themselves as royalty with divine rights?"

"The lamps are going out all over .... we shall not see them lit again in our life-time." Pace, Sir Edward Grey, who wrote this when World War One was starting up and hence also setting in motion the Second World War and the Communist takeovers of Eastern and Central Europe. Global immiseration, the wretched of the earth. Neumann was a lion and the superscalar despots are the donkeys, but that's really a slander on donkeys.

What have we become?