The digirati are the elite of the computer industry and online communities, and are perceived as being extremely knowledgeable about computers. The word digirati refers to the movers and shakers within the industry and is synonymous with such words as “technorati” and “geekerati.”
Digirati was used in an article written by John Markoff for the New York Times in an article entitled “Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute” published on January 29, 1992:
Igniting the Kendall Square controversy was an article by the economist George Gilder, published this month in a narrowly circulated but closely read Silicon Valley magazine called Upside. Mr. Gilder, perhaps best known as the supply-sider whose book “Wealth and Poverty” provided the intellectual underpinnings of the so-called Reagan revolution, has no experience in computer design. But he has written widely on the subject in recent years and his opinions, though often controversial, are taken seriously among the computer digerati.
Some of the digirati include: W. Daniel Hillis, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Thinking Machines Corporation; Stewart McBride, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of United Digital Artists; Kip Parent, Founder of Pantheon Interactive; and Lew Tucker, Director of JavaSoft’s Corporate and ISV Relations for Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Historically Speaking 