Tom Mandel (futurist)

{{Infobox person

| name = Tom Mandel

| birth_date = 1946

| birth_place = Chicago, Illinois

| death_date = April 6, 1995

| nationality = American

| alma_mater = University of Hawaii

| occupation = futurologist

}}

Tom Mandel (1946 – April 6, 1995) was an American futurologist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He dropped out of college twice and served in the United States Marine Corps in the Vietnam War for nine months in 1969.{{Cite news| page = 1F| last = Flynn| first = Laurie| title = Seeing the future from computing to publishing, Tom Mandel has his eye on the wave after next| work = San Jose Mercury News| location = San Jose| date = February 20, 1994}} In 1972, he was the first graduate of the "Futures program" at the University of Hawaii.{{Cite web|last=Dator |first=Jim |title=Letter to Kevin Kelly |work=University of Hawaii at Manoa |accessdate=February 28, 2012 |date=May 19, 1997 |url=http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/dator/other/mandel.html |url-status=unfit |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20020102160724/http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/dator/other/mandel.html |archivedate=January 2, 2002 }} He then did some graduate work in cybernetics at San Jose State University and was hired as a futurologist by SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park, California, in 1975.

Mandel's consulting practice focused on social trend analysis and forecasting for a wide range of consumer products and technology companies, and he published several scenarios reports in collaboration with the Values and Lifestyles (VALS) program at SRI and as a senior consultant in SRI's Business Intelligence Center.

In addition to his work at SRI, Mandel was an editor of Time Online{{cite news|title=To Our Readers|first=Philip|last=Elmer-DeWitt|work=Time Magazine|date=April 9, 1995|url=http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199504/msg00025.html|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20050917175947/http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199504/msg00025.html|archivedate=September 17, 2005}} and "one of the most prolific citizens of the on-line community known as the Well,"{{Cite news| last = Akst| first = Daniel| title = A WELLness community that's part net, part encounter group| work = Los Angeles Times| location = Los Angeles| access-date = 2012-02-28| date = 1995-04-05| url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-04-05-fi-51082-story.html}} where he was considered "a central figure."{{Cite book| edition = revised| publisher = The MIT Press| isbn = 0-262-68121-8| last = Rheingold| first = Howard| title = The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier| location = Cambridge, MA| date = 2000-11-01|page=326}} His experiences in that community became the basis of a magazine article{{Cite magazine | last = Hafner | first = Katie | title = The Epic Saga of The Well | magazine = Wired | accessdate = February 28, 2012 | date = May 1997 | url = https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.05/ff_well_pr.html }} and a book{{cite book |first=Katie |last=Hafner |title=The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community |url=https://archive.org/details/wellstoryofloved00hafn |url-access=registration |year=2001 |publisher=Carroll & Graf Publishers |isbn= 0-7867-0846-8 }} by Katie Hafner.

Mandel was "one of the first (if not the first) to share on-line, with a wide audience, his own experience of dying."{{Cite news| last = Kuntz| first = Tom| title = Tom Mandel and friends: A death on-line shows a cyberspace with heart and soul| work = New York Times| accessdate = 2012-02-28| date = 1995-04-23| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/23/weekinreview/word-for-word-tom-mandel-friends-death-line-shows-cyberspace-with-heart-soul.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm}} On March 25, 1995, he posted on The Well that he was dying of lung cancer. He died eleven days later on April 6, 1995, at Stanford University Hospital, listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with his wife Nana. He was 49.