Mike Jensen

Mike Jensen (born 1958) is a South African ICT expert who was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as a "Global Connector" in 2017. He is particularly known for his work to build networks connecting the non-profit sector and for assisting developing countries to establish network connectivity. Education Jensen grew up in Johannesburg in South Africa, the son of Anton Jensen and Berrell Jensen (née Jay), a contemporary sculptor. He studied biology at Queen's University Belfast from 197680 and, as a post-graduate at the University of Guelph in Canada, specialized in acid-rain pollution research. However, he began to question the value of writing scientific papers that seemed to have little impact on policy making. At that time the Reagan administration in the USA was denying the linkage between pollution and acid rain and Jensen started to write about pollution for student newspapers. After receiving his MSc he returned to South Africa and was, for a time, a technology journalist on the anti-apartheid Rand Daily Mail. Early innovations When the Rand Daily Mail closed down in 1985 due to its inability to attract advertisers as a paper that targeted both black and white readers, Jensen decided to emigrate to Canada. In 1982, while studying for his MSc, he had been introduced to the CoSy online messaging system. CoSy was being developed by the University of Guelph and was subsequently selected in 1985 by Byte magazine for that magazine's BYTE Information eXchange, a networked bulletin board. While he waited in Toronto for his Canadian immigration clearance in 1986, Jensen opened a computer account at the University of Toronto that was using Usenet newsgroups for online discussions and information sharing. He had started volunteering with the Ontario Environmental Network (OEN) and wondered whether something similar to Usenet could be put together for environmental groups. Jensen set up a multi-user network for the OEN, using a cheap personal computer and a PC-based version of the Unix operating system, thereby offering the potential for cheaper internet access than that provided by commercial mainframe systems. Together with Kirk Roberts, he founded an Internet service provider for the non-profit sector, known as "The Web". Subsequently called Web Networks, “The Web” predated the World Wide Web by three years and provided cheaper internet access for NGOs than any commercial systems available at the time.