I just learned that John C. Dvorak has died on Monday. JCD had a heart attack earlier this year, but he was doing much better and I just listened to the last No Agenda episode he recorded on Sunday (episode 1887) this morning, so this comes as a bit of a shock.

I will miss John very much. He was one of my journalistic heroes. He almost single-handedly alerted me to all the bullshit that goes on in Silicon Valley and that it wasn’t an exception, but rather the standard modus operandi in that part of the tech industry. Calculated to mislead the public by generating a lot of overblown hype to sell more product. John stood up to this crap for decades. He was one of the journalists who, through his work, encouraged my natural scepticism and my inherent tendency to always ask questions when everyone around me would just accept something. He taught me that this is a good quality in a journalist — and every other human being for that matter — one that we want to encourage, rather than an annoyance that is to be chastised.

We need more people like John C. Dvorak in this world, not less. People who want to get at the truth of the matter, rather than placate other people’s emotional or financial needs. His tendency to always ask the next question, to never accept conventional “wisdom” and to just be the one stubborn old man in the room (even when he was quite young) who will always take the more unpopular — but probably closer to the truth — side of the argument will be sorely missed. This is a bad day. For tech journalism and for the world at large. Goodbye, John. I know that, wherever you are now, the powers that be over there are not to be envied. Give ’em hell!

John C. Dvorak (1946 - 2026) — journalist, podcaster, curmudgeon (Photo: No Agenda)

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