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Wired (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine
and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast
, it is headquartered in San Francisco
, California
.
It now has four international editions: Wired UK
, Wired Italia, Wired Japan and Wired Germany (since September 2011).
In its earliest colophons Wired credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan
as its "patron saint
." From the beginning, the strongest immediate influence on the magazine's editorial outlook came from the techno-utopian
agenda of co-founder Stewart Brand
and his long-time associate Kevin Kelly
.
From 1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News
(which publishes at Wired.com) had separate owners. However, throughout that time, Wired News remained responsible for reprinting Wired magazine's content online, due to a business agreement made when Condé Nast purchased the magazine (but not the website). In July 2006, Condé Nast announced an agreement to buy Wired News for $25 million, reuniting the magazine with its website.
Wired is known for coining new terms, such as "the long tail
" and "crowdsourcing
". It is also well known for its annual tradition of handing out Vaporware
Awards which recognize "products, videogames and other nerdy tidbits pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered".
and his partner Jane Metcalfe
in 1993 with initial backing from software entrepreneur Charlie Jackson
and eclectic academic Nicholas Negroponte
of the MIT
Media Lab, who was a regular columnist for six years, through 1998 and wrote the book Being Digital
. The founding designers were John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr (Plunkett+Kuhr), beginning with a 1991 prototype and continuing through the first five years of publication, 1993–98.
Wired, which touted itself as "the Rolling Stone
of technology," made its debut at the Macworld
conference on January 2, 1993. A great success at its launch, it was lauded for its vision, originality, innovation and cultural impact. In its first four years, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and one for Design.
The founding executive editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, was formerly one of the editors of the Whole Earth Catalog
and the Whole Earth Review
, and he brought with him many contributing writers from those publications. Six authors of the first Wired issue (1.1) had written for Whole Earth Review, most notably Bruce Sterling
and Stewart Brand
. Other contributors to Whole Earth appeared in Wired, including William Gibson
, who was featured on Wireds cover in its first year and whose article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty
" in issue 1.4 resulted in the publication being banned in Singapore
.
Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto claimed in the magazine's first issue that "the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon," yet despite the fact that Kelly was involved in launching the WELL, an early source of public access to the Internet and even earlier non-Internet online experience, Wireds first issue de-emphasized the Internet, and covered interactive games, cell-phone hacking, digital special effects, military simulations, and Japanese otaku
. However, the first issue did contain a few references to the internet, including online-dating and internet sex, and a tutorial on installing a "bozo filter". The last page, a column written by Nicholas Negroponte, was written in the style of an e-mail message, but contained obviously fake, non-standard e-mail addresses. By the third issue in the fall of 1993 the "Net Surf" column began listing interesting FTP
sites, Usenet newsgroups, and e-mail
addresses, at a time when the numbers of these things were small and this information was still extremely novel to the public. Wired was among the first magazines to list the email address of its authors and contributors.
Associate publisher Kathleen Lyman (formerly of News Corporation
and Ziff Davis
) was brought on board to launch Wired with an advertising base of major technology and consumer advertisers. Lyman, along with Simon Ferguson (Wireds first advertising manager), introduced revolutionary ad campaigns by a diverse group of industry leaders—such as Apple Computer, Intel
, Sony
, Calvin Klein
, and Absolut
—to the readers of the first technology publication with a lifestyle slant.
The magazine was quickly followed by a companion website HotWired
, a book publishing division, HardWired, a Japanese edition, and a short-lived British edition, Wired UK. Wired UK was relaunched in April 2009. In 1994, John Battelle
, co-founding editor, commissioned Jules Marshall
to write a piece on the Zippies. The cover story broke records for being one of the most publicized stories of the year and was used to promote Wired's HotWired news service.
HotWired itself spawned dozens of websites including Webmonkey
, the search engine
Hotbot
, and a weblog, Suck.com
. In June 1998, the magazine even launched its own stock index, The Wired Index, since July 2003 called The Wired 40.
The fortune of the magazine and allied enterprises corresponded closely to that of the dot-com bubble
. In 1996, Rossetto and the other participants in Wired Ventures attempted to take the company public with an IPO
. The initial attempt had to be withdrawn in the face of a downturn in the stock market, and especially the internet sector, during the summer of 1996. The second try was also unsuccessful.
Rossetto and Metcalfe lost control of Wired Ventures to financial investors Providence Equity Partners
in May 1998, who quickly sold off the company in pieces. Wired was purchased by Advance Publications
, who assigned it to Advance's subsidiary, New York-based publisher Condé Nast Publications
(while keeping Wireds editorial offices in San Francisco). Wired Digital (wired.com, hotbot.com, webmonkey.com, etc.) was purchased by Lycos.com and run independently from the rest of the magazine until 2006 when it was sold by Lycos to Advance Publications, returning the websites back to the same company that published the magazine.
and found a new direction under editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, who took on the job in June 2001 and has made the magazine's coverage "more mainstream".
Under Anderson, Wired has produced some widely noted articles, including the April 2003 "Welcome to the Hydrogen Economy" story, the November 2003 "Open Source Everywhere" issue (which put Linus Torvalds
on the cover and articulated the idea that the open-source
method was taking off outside of software, including encyclopedia
s as evidenced by Wikipedia
), the February 2004 "Kiss Your Cubicle Goodbye" issue (which presented the outsourcing
issue from both American and Indian perspectives), and an October 2004 article by Chris Anderson, which coined the popular term "long tail
".
The November 2004 issue of Wired was published with The Wired CD
. All of the songs on the CD were released under various Creative Commons
licenses, an attempt to push alternative copyright into the spotlight. Most of the songs were contributed by major artists, including the Beastie Boys
, My Morning Jacket
, Paul Westerberg
, David Byrne
, and Le Tigre
.
In recent years Wired has won several industry awards. In 2005 the magazine received the National Magazine Award
for General Excellence in the category of 500,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers. That same year Anderson won Advertising Age
's editor of the year award. In May 2007, the magazine again won the National Magazine Award
for General Excellence. In 2008, Wired was nominated for three National Magazine Awards and won the ASME for Design. It also took home 14 Society of Publication Design Awards, including the Gold for Magazine of the Year. In 2009, Wired was nominated for four National Magazine Awards -- including General Excellence, Design, Best Section (Start), and Integration -- and won three: General Excellence, Design and Best Section (Start). David Rowan from Wired UK was awarded the BSME Launch of the Year 2009 award. On December 14, 2009, Wired magazine was named Magazine of the Decade by the editors of AdWeek
.
In 2006, writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson coined the term crowdsourcing
in the June issue.
On February 19, 2009, Condé Nast Italia launched the Italian edition of Wired and Wired.it. On April 2, 2009, Condé Nast relaunched the UK edition of Wired, edited by David Rowan, and launched Wired.co.uk, which is now run by ex-CNET
editor Nate Lanxon.
On August 15, 2009 Wired writer, Evan Ratliff
"vanished" attempting to keep his whereabouts secret saying "I will try to stay hidden for 30 days." A $5,000 reward was offered to his finder(s). Ratliff was found September 8 in New Orleans by a team effort, which was written about by Ratliff in a later issue.
On May 27, 2010, Wired released its Tablet edition, first available on the iPad. Embraced by consumers and heralded as the beginning of a new era in publishing, the Wired iPad edition was downloaded an average of 17 times a minute for the first 24 hours, netting 24,000+ paid subscriptions. Over the ensuing days, Apple named the Wired Tablet Edition, "The App of the Week," making it the first media brand to earn this acknowledgment; and the Wired App remained the #1 Paid Download on iTunes for 5 consecutive days. Close to three weeks following the release of this Tablet Edition, Wired had sold 90,000+ copies - exceeding the average monthly newsstand sales of its print edition.
In October and November 2010, Wired found itself embroiled in some controversy after many customers were unable to download the November issue of the Tablet edition after having been charged for it. Wired was in a tricky position, as the error message appeared to be related to the Adobe development suite they were using to put together the digital edition, and because individual issues are purchased through Apple's App Store, Wired was unable to issue refunds directly to affected customers. As of mid-November 2010, the issue had not been resolved, and Wired released the December issue prior to fixing the issue with the November edition. The impact on sales (if any) of later issues related to the negative feedback from disgruntled Wired customers is unknown at this time.
From 2004 to 2008, Wired organized an annual "festival of innovative products and technologies". A NextFest had also been planned for 2009, but it was later canceled.
, John Perry Barlow
, John Battelle
, Paul Boutin
, Stewart Brand
, Gareth Branwyn
, Po Bronson
, Scott Carney
, Michael Chorost
, Douglas Coupland
, James Daly
, Joshua Davis
, J. Bradford DeLong
, Mark Dery
, David Diamond
, Patrick Di Justo
, Cory Doctorow
, Esther Dyson
, Mark Frauenfelder
, Simson Garfinkel
, William Gibson
, Dan Gillmor
Mike Godwin
, George Gilder
, Lou Ann Hammond
, Danny Hillis, Steven Johnson
, Bill Joy
, Jon Katz
, Leander Kahney
, Richard Kadrey
, Jaron Lanier
, Lawrence Lessig
, Paul Levinson
, Steven Levy
, John Markoff
, Wil McCarthy
, Glyn Moody
, Charles Platt
, Josh Quittner
, Spencer Reiss
, Howard Rheingold
, Rudy Rucker
, Paul Saffo
, Evan Schwartz
, Peter Schwartz
, Alex Steffen
, Neal Stephenson
, Bruce Sterling
, John Hodgman
, Kevin Warwick
, Dave Winer
, and Gary Wolf
. Guest editors have included Rem Koolhaas
, James Cameron
, Will Wright, and JJ Abrams.
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
, it is headquartered in San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
It now has four international editions: Wired UK
Wired UK
Wired UK is a full-colour monthly magazine that reports primarily on the effects of science and technology. It covers a broad range of topics including design, architecture, culture, the economy, politics and philosophy...
, Wired Italia, Wired Japan and Wired Germany (since September 2011).
In its earliest colophons Wired credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
as its "patron saint
Patron saint
A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
." From the beginning, the strongest immediate influence on the magazine's editorial outlook came from the techno-utopian
Technological utopianism
Technological utopianism refers to any ideology based on the belief that advances in science and technology will eventually bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal...
agenda of co-founder Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
and his long-time associate Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture.-Biography:...
.
From 1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News
Wired News
Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
(which publishes at Wired.com) had separate owners. However, throughout that time, Wired News remained responsible for reprinting Wired magazine's content online, due to a business agreement made when Condé Nast purchased the magazine (but not the website). In July 2006, Condé Nast announced an agreement to buy Wired News for $25 million, reuniting the magazine with its website.
Wired is known for coining new terms, such as "the long tail
The Long Tail
The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...
" and "crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
". It is also well known for its annual tradition of handing out Vaporware
Vaporware
Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially canceled. Vaporware is also a term sometimes used to describe events that are announced or predicted,...
Awards which recognize "products, videogames and other nerdy tidbits pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered".
History
The magazine was founded by American journalist Louis RossettoLouis Rossetto
Louis Rossetto is an American journalist and "radical libertarian." He is best known as the founder and former publisher of Wired magazine.- Early life and career :Rossetto was born and grew up on Long Island, New York....
and his partner Jane Metcalfe
Jane Metcalfe
Jane Metcalfe is the co-founder, with Louis Rossetto, and former president of Wired Ventures, creator and original publisher of Wired Magazine...
in 1993 with initial backing from software entrepreneur Charlie Jackson
Charlie Jackson (software)
Charlie Jackson is a computer software entrepreneur who founded Silicon Beach Software in 1984 and co-founded FutureWave Software in 1993. FutureWave created the first version of what is now Adobe Flash. He was an early investor in Wired magazine, Outpost.com, Streamload and Angelic...
and eclectic academic Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte is an American architect best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association ....
of the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Media Lab, who was a regular columnist for six years, through 1998 and wrote the book Being Digital
Being Digital
Being Digital is a non-fiction book about digital technologies and their possible future by technology author Nicholas Negroponte. It was originally published in January 1995 by Vintage Publishing....
. The founding designers were John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr (Plunkett+Kuhr), beginning with a 1991 prototype and continuing through the first five years of publication, 1993–98.
Wired, which touted itself as "the Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
of technology," made its debut at the Macworld
Macworld
Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...
conference on January 2, 1993. A great success at its launch, it was lauded for its vision, originality, innovation and cultural impact. In its first four years, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and one for Design.
The founding executive editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, was formerly one of the editors of the Whole Earth Catalog
Whole Earth Catalog
The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998...
and the Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth Review
Whole Earth was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the Whole Earth Software Review and the CoEvolution Quarterly. All of these periodicals are descendants of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog...
, and he brought with him many contributing writers from those publications. Six authors of the first Wired issue (1.1) had written for Whole Earth Review, most notably Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
and Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
. Other contributors to Whole Earth appeared in Wired, including William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
, who was featured on Wireds cover in its first year and whose article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty
Disneyland with the Death Penalty
"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" is an article about Singapore written by William Gibson, his first major piece of non-fiction, first published as the cover story for Wired magazine's September/October 1993 issue ....
" in issue 1.4 resulted in the publication being banned in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
.
Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto claimed in the magazine's first issue that "the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon," yet despite the fact that Kelly was involved in launching the WELL, an early source of public access to the Internet and even earlier non-Internet online experience, Wireds first issue de-emphasized the Internet, and covered interactive games, cell-phone hacking, digital special effects, military simulations, and Japanese otaku
Otaku
is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga or video games.- Etymology :Otaku is derived from a Japanese term for another's house or family , which is also used as an honorific second-person pronoun...
. However, the first issue did contain a few references to the internet, including online-dating and internet sex, and a tutorial on installing a "bozo filter". The last page, a column written by Nicholas Negroponte, was written in the style of an e-mail message, but contained obviously fake, non-standard e-mail addresses. By the third issue in the fall of 1993 the "Net Surf" column began listing interesting FTP
File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
sites, Usenet newsgroups, and e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
addresses, at a time when the numbers of these things were small and this information was still extremely novel to the public. Wired was among the first magazines to list the email address of its authors and contributors.
Associate publisher Kathleen Lyman (formerly of News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
and Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis Inc. is an American publisher and Internet company. It was founded in 1927 in Chicago by William B. Ziff, Sr. and Bernard G. Davis. Throughout most of its history, it was a publisher of hobbyist magazines, often ones devoted to expensive, advertiser-rich hobbies such as cars,...
) was brought on board to launch Wired with an advertising base of major technology and consumer advertisers. Lyman, along with Simon Ferguson (Wireds first advertising manager), introduced revolutionary ad campaigns by a diverse group of industry leaders—such as Apple Computer, Intel
Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
, Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, Calvin Klein
Calvin Klein
Calvin Richard Klein is an American fashion designer who launched the company that would later become Calvin Klein Inc. in 1968. In addition to clothing, Klein has also given his name to a range of perfumes, watches, and jewelry....
, and Absolut
Absolut Vodka
Absolut Vodka is a brand of vodka, produced near Åhus, Skåne, in southern Sweden. Since July 2008 the company has been owned by the French firm Pernod Ricard who bought V&S Group from the Swedish government....
—to the readers of the first technology publication with a lifestyle slant.
The magazine was quickly followed by a companion website HotWired
HotWired
Hotwired was the first commercial web magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. Although it was part of Wired Ventures, Hotwired was a separate entity from Wired, the print magazine, and had original content....
, a book publishing division, HardWired, a Japanese edition, and a short-lived British edition, Wired UK. Wired UK was relaunched in April 2009. In 1994, John Battelle
John Battelle
John Linwood Battelle is a journalist as well as founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing. He is a visiting professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and also maintains Searchblog, a weblog covering search, technology, and media.Battelle is one of the original...
, co-founding editor, commissioned Jules Marshall
Jules Marshall
Jules Marshall has been an editor for Mediamatic Magazine since 1989. Trained as a journalist and a contributing writer for Wired, he has also written for Time Out , i-D, Weiner, Sydney Morning Herald, Blvd...
to write a piece on the Zippies. The cover story broke records for being one of the most publicized stories of the year and was used to promote Wired's HotWired news service.
HotWired itself spawned dozens of websites including Webmonkey
Webmonkey
Webmonkey is a popular online tutorial website composed of various articles on building webpages from backend to frontend. The site covers many aspects of developing on the web like programming, database, multimedia, and setting up web storefronts. The content presented is much like Wired magazine...
, the search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
Hotbot
HotBot
HotBot is a web search engine launched in May 1996 by Wired Magazine. It is currently owned by Lycos. HotBot became a popular tool with search results served by the Inktomi database and directory results provided originally by LookSmart and then the Open Directory Project since mid-1999...
, and a weblog, Suck.com
Suck.com
Suck.com was one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a wide variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture and was targeted at Generation X...
. In June 1998, the magazine even launched its own stock index, The Wired Index, since July 2003 called The Wired 40.
The fortune of the magazine and allied enterprises corresponded closely to that of the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
. In 1996, Rossetto and the other participants in Wired Ventures attempted to take the company public with an IPO
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
. The initial attempt had to be withdrawn in the face of a downturn in the stock market, and especially the internet sector, during the summer of 1996. The second try was also unsuccessful.
Rossetto and Metcalfe lost control of Wired Ventures to financial investors Providence Equity Partners
Providence Equity Partners
Providence Equity Partners is a global private equity investment firm focused on media, entertainment, communications and information investments...
in May 1998, who quickly sold off the company in pieces. Wired was purchased by Advance Publications
Advance Publications
Advance Publications, Inc., is an American media company owned by the descendants of S.I. Newhouse Sr., Donald Newhouse and S.I. Newhouse, Jr. It is named after the Staten Island Advance, the first newspaper owned by the Newhouse family...
, who assigned it to Advance's subsidiary, New York-based publisher Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast Publications
Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...
(while keeping Wireds editorial offices in San Francisco). Wired Digital (wired.com, hotbot.com, webmonkey.com, etc.) was purchased by Lycos.com and run independently from the rest of the magazine until 2006 when it was sold by Lycos to Advance Publications, returning the websites back to the same company that published the magazine.
The Anderson era
Wired survived the dot-com bubbleDot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
and found a new direction under editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, who took on the job in June 2001 and has made the magazine's coverage "more mainstream".
Under Anderson, Wired has produced some widely noted articles, including the April 2003 "Welcome to the Hydrogen Economy" story, the November 2003 "Open Source Everywhere" issue (which put Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
on the cover and articulated the idea that the open-source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
method was taking off outside of software, including encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
s as evidenced by Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
), the February 2004 "Kiss Your Cubicle Goodbye" issue (which presented the outsourcing
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
issue from both American and Indian perspectives), and an October 2004 article by Chris Anderson, which coined the popular term "long tail
The Long Tail
The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...
".
The November 2004 issue of Wired was published with The Wired CD
The Wired CD
The Wired CD is an album that was released in 2004 as a collaborative effort between Wired magazine, Creative Commons, and sixteen musicians and groups. The Wired CD was distributed inside the front cover of the November 2004 issue of Wired, which also featured a variety of interviews and bios of...
. All of the songs on the CD were released under various Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
licenses, an attempt to push alternative copyright into the spotlight. Most of the songs were contributed by major artists, including the Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
, My Morning Jacket
My Morning Jacket
My Morning Jacket is an American rock band from Louisville, Kentucky.The band consists of Jim James , Tom 'Two-Tone Tommy' Blankenship , Patrick Hallahan , Carl Broemel , and Bo Koster .-History:My Morning Jacket was...
, Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg is an American musician, best known as the former lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and songwriter of The Replacements, one of the seminal alternative rock bands of the 1980s. He launched a solo career after the dissolution of that band...
, David Byrne
David Byrne (musician)
David Byrne is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography,...
, and Le Tigre
Le Tigre
Le Tigre is an American electroclash band, formed by Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman in 1998. It also featured Sadie Benning from 1998 until 2001, and JD Samson for the rest of the group's run...
.
In recent years Wired has won several industry awards. In 2005 the magazine received the National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
for General Excellence in the category of 500,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers. That same year Anderson won Advertising Age
Advertising Age
Advertising Age is a magazine, delivering news, analysis and data on marketing and media. The magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930...
's editor of the year award. In May 2007, the magazine again won the National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
for General Excellence. In 2008, Wired was nominated for three National Magazine Awards and won the ASME for Design. It also took home 14 Society of Publication Design Awards, including the Gold for Magazine of the Year. In 2009, Wired was nominated for four National Magazine Awards -- including General Excellence, Design, Best Section (Start), and Integration -- and won three: General Excellence, Design and Best Section (Start). David Rowan from Wired UK was awarded the BSME Launch of the Year 2009 award. On December 14, 2009, Wired magazine was named Magazine of the Decade by the editors of AdWeek
Adweek
Adweek is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1978....
.
In 2006, writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson coined the term crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
in the June issue.
On February 19, 2009, Condé Nast Italia launched the Italian edition of Wired and Wired.it. On April 2, 2009, Condé Nast relaunched the UK edition of Wired, edited by David Rowan, and launched Wired.co.uk, which is now run by ex-CNET
CNET.com
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
editor Nate Lanxon.
On August 15, 2009 Wired writer, Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff is a contributor to Wired Magazine and one of the coauthors of Safe: the race to protect ourselves in a newly dangerous world. His article The Zombie Hunters: On the trail of cyberextortionists, written for The New Yorker in 2005, was featured in The best of technology writing...
"vanished" attempting to keep his whereabouts secret saying "I will try to stay hidden for 30 days." A $5,000 reward was offered to his finder(s). Ratliff was found September 8 in New Orleans by a team effort, which was written about by Ratliff in a later issue.
On May 27, 2010, Wired released its Tablet edition, first available on the iPad. Embraced by consumers and heralded as the beginning of a new era in publishing, the Wired iPad edition was downloaded an average of 17 times a minute for the first 24 hours, netting 24,000+ paid subscriptions. Over the ensuing days, Apple named the Wired Tablet Edition, "The App of the Week," making it the first media brand to earn this acknowledgment; and the Wired App remained the #1 Paid Download on iTunes for 5 consecutive days. Close to three weeks following the release of this Tablet Edition, Wired had sold 90,000+ copies - exceeding the average monthly newsstand sales of its print edition.
In October and November 2010, Wired found itself embroiled in some controversy after many customers were unable to download the November issue of the Tablet edition after having been charged for it. Wired was in a tricky position, as the error message appeared to be related to the Adobe development suite they were using to put together the digital edition, and because individual issues are purchased through Apple's App Store, Wired was unable to issue refunds directly to affected customers. As of mid-November 2010, the issue had not been resolved, and Wired released the December issue prior to fixing the issue with the November edition. The impact on sales (if any) of later issues related to the negative feedback from disgruntled Wired customers is unknown at this time.
NextFest
- 2004: May 14–16 at the Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
- 2005: June 24–26 at Navy PierNavy PierNavy Pier is a long pier on the Chicago shoreline of Lake Michigan. It is located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area. The pier was built in 1916 at a cost of $4.5 million, equivalent to $ today. It was a part of the Plan of Chicago developed by architect and...
, Chicago - 2006: September 28 – October 1 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention CenterJacob K. Javits Convention CenterJacob K. Javits Convention Center is a large convention center located on Eleventh Avenue, between 34th and 38th streets, on the West side of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed by architects I. M. Pei and partners. The revolutionary space frame structure was undertaken in 1979 and...
, New York City - 2007: September 13–16 at the Los Angeles Convention CenterLos Angeles Convention CenterThe Los Angeles Convention Center is a convention center in the southwest portion of downtown Los Angeles. The LACC hosts annual events such as the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show and Anime Expo, and is best known to video games fans as host to E3...
, Los Angeles - 2008: September 27 – October 12 at Millennium ParkMillennium ParkMillennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, USA and originally intended to celebrate the millennium. It is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a section of northwestern Grant Park. The area was previously...
in Chicago
Supplement
- Geekipedia is a supplement to Wired.
Contributors
Over the years, Wireds writers have included Jorn BargerJorn Barger
Jorn Barger is an American blogger, best known as editor of Robot Wisdom, an influential early weblog. Barger coined the term weblog to describe the process of "logging the web" as he surfed...
, John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow is an American poet and essayist, a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, and a cyberlibertarian political activist who has been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He is also a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a founding member of the Electronic...
, John Battelle
John Battelle
John Linwood Battelle is a journalist as well as founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing. He is a visiting professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and also maintains Searchblog, a weblog covering search, technology, and media.Battelle is one of the original...
, Paul Boutin
Paul Boutin (journalist)
Paul Boutin is a magazine writer and editor who writes about technology in a pop-culture context....
, Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
, Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn
Gareth Branwyn is a writer, editor, and media critic.He has covered technology, DIY media, and cyberculture for Wired, Esquire, the Baltimore Sun and other publications. He has also been an editor at Mondo 2000, and at Boing Boing when it was a print zine...
, Po Bronson
Po Bronson
Po Bronson is an American journalist and author who lives in San Francisco, California.-Personal history:Bronson was born in Seattle, Washington. After attending Lakeside School in Seattle, he graduated from Stanford University in 1986 and briefly worked as an assistant bond salesman in San...
, Scott Carney
Scott Carney
Scott Carney is an American freelance journalist. He reported from Chennai, India between 2006–2009 and currently resides in Long Beach, CA. He contributes stories on a variety of medical, technological and ethical issues to Wired Magazine, Mother Jones and National Public Radio...
, Michael Chorost
Michael Chorost
Michael Chorost is an American writer and teacher. Born with severe loss of hearing due to rubella, his hearing was partially restored with a cochlear implant in 2001. He subsequently wrote a memoir of the experience, titled Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human...
, Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and...
, James Daly
James Daly (journalist)
James Daly is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist and owner of 2030 Media, a content-creation firm in Northern California. He is the editor of TED Books, a series of ebooks produced by the TED conference...
, Joshua Davis
Joshua Davis (writer)
Joshua Davis is an American author, journalist and filmmaker who lives in San Francisco, California.Davis is currently a contributing editor at Wired magazine. In 2003, he reported from Iraq for the magazine. He has also written about genetically modified cocaine in Colombia, attempts to engineer...
, J. Bradford DeLong
J. Bradford DeLong
James Bradford DeLong commonly known as Brad DeLong, is a professor of Economics and chair of the Political Economy major at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration under Lawrence...
, Mark Dery
Mark Dery
Mark Dery is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. He writes about "media, the visual landscape, fringe trends, and unpopular culture" From 2001 to 2009, he taught media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at New York University...
, David Diamond
David Diamond
David Diamond is the name of:* David Diamond , American composer* David Diamond * David Diamond , American screenwriter* David Diamond, frontman and songwriter with Canadian band The Kings...
, Patrick Di Justo
Patrick Di Justo
Patrick Di Justo is a freelance magazine writer who writes about science and technology. He is a contributing editor to Wired magazine, where he writes the monthly What's Inside column, and the co-author of The Science of Battlestar Galactica, an exploration of the science behind the re-imagined...
, Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
, Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson is a former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst who is a leading angel investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and commentator focused on breakthrough innovation in healthcare, government transparency, digital technology, biotechnology, and space...
, Mark Frauenfelder
Mark Frauenfelder
Mark Frauenfelder is a blogger, illustrator, and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing. Along with his wife, Carla Sinclair, he founded the bOING bOING print zine in 1988, where he acted as editor until the print version folded in...
, Simson Garfinkel
Simson Garfinkel
Simson L. Garfinkel is an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Garfinkel is regarded as a leader in the fields of Digital forensics and Usable Security...
, William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
, Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor is a noted American technology writer and columnist. He is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard...
Mike Godwin
Mike Godwin
Michael Wayne Godwin is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , and the creator of the Internet adage Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation...
, George Gilder
George Gilder
George F. Gilder is an American writer, techno-utopian intellectual, Republican Party activist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute...
, Lou Ann Hammond
Lou Ann Hammond
Lou Ann Hammond has a work history in the energy and transportation field. Starting with ChevronCorp. in finance and accounting from 1978-1986. Lou Ann was exposed to the accounting, selling,...
, Danny Hillis, Steven Johnson
Steven Berlin Johnson
Steven Berlin Johnson is an American popular science author.-Education:Steven Johnson attended the prestigious St. Albans School as a youth. He completed his undergraduate degree at Brown University, where he studied semiotics, a part of Brown's modern culture and media department...
, Bill Joy
Bill Joy
William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...
, Jon Katz
Jon Katz
Jonathan Katz is a U.S. journalist, author, and snowballer. He is known for his contributions to the online magazine HotWired, the technology website Slashdot, the online news magazine Slate.com, and his series of crime novels, books on the geek subculture, and his books on dogs.-Journalism:Katz...
, Leander Kahney
Leander Kahney
Leander Kahney is a technology writer and author. He is a former managing editor, and previously a senior reporter, at Wired News, the online sister publication of Wired...
, Richard Kadrey
Richard Kadrey
Richard Kadrey is a novelist, freelance writer, and photographer based in San Francisco.Kadrey's novels are Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha From Hell, Metrophage, Kamikaze L'Amour, and Butcher Bird: A Novel Of The Dominion...
, Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier
Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality .A pioneer in the field of VR, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves...
, Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
, Paul Levinson
Paul Levinson
Paul Levinson is an American author and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York City. Levinson's novels, short fiction, and non-fiction works have been translated into twelve languages....
, Steven Levy
Steven Levy
Steven Levy is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.-Career:...
, John Markoff
John Markoff
John Markoff is a journalist best known for his work at The New York Times, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.- Biography :...
, Wil McCarthy
Wil McCarthy
Wil McCarthy is a science fiction novelist, Chief Technology Officer for Galileo Shipyards , and the science columnist for Syfy...
, Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody is a technology writer. He is best known for his book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution . It describes the evolution and significance of the free software and open source movements with many interviews of all the notable hackers.- Selective bibliography :* Digital Code of...
, Charles Platt
Charles Platt (science-fiction author)
Charles Platt is an author, journalist and computer programmer. He relocated from England to the United States in 1970, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and has one daughter, Rose Fox...
, Josh Quittner
Josh Quittner
Josh Quittner is an American journalist.Born in Manhattan, Quittner grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Grinnell College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is married to Michelle Slatalla and has three daughters...
, Spencer Reiss
Spencer Reiss
Spencer Reiss is a former Newsweek foreign correspondent, now a contributing editor at Wired magazine. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, he lives in Salisbury, Connecticut United States.-References:...
, Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold
-See also:* Collective intelligence* Information society* The WELL* Virtual community-External links:***** at TED conference** a 48MB Quicktime movie, hosted by the Internet Archive...
, Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and philosopher, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of...
, Paul Saffo
Paul Saffo
Paul Saffo is a technology forecaster based in Silicon Valley. A Consulting Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, Saffo teaches courses on the future of engineering and the impact of technological change on the future...
, Evan Schwartz
Evan Schwartz
Evan I. Schwartz is an American author who writes about innovation and imagination. He has written The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television, the story of inventor Philo Farnsworth and his epic battle with RCA tycoon David Sarnoff.His screenplay, Televisionaries,...
, Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz (futurist)
Peter Schwartz is a futurist, author, and cofounder of the Global Business Network , an elite corporate strategy firm, specializing in future-think and scenario planning...
, Alex Steffen
Alex Steffen
Alex Steffen is an American writer, editor, public speaker and futurist most noted for his bright green ideas.Steffen co-founded and ran the online magazine Worldchanging from its start in 2003 until its closure in 2010...
, Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...
, Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
, John Hodgman
John Hodgman
John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in...
, Kevin Warwick
Kevin Warwick
Kevin Warwick is a British scientist and professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom...
, Dave Winer
Dave Winer
Dave Winer is an American software developer, entrepreneur and writer in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web services, as well as blogging and podcasting...
, and Gary Wolf
Gary Wolf (journalist)
This article refers to the journalist and contributing editor for Wired magazine. For the novelist and creator of the Roger Rabbit universe, see Gary K. Wolf.Gary Wolf is a writer and contributing editor at Wired magazine...
. Guest editors have included Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas
Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas studied at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, at the Architectural...
, James Cameron
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...
, Will Wright, and JJ Abrams.
External resources
- Wired (owned by Condé Nast Publications)
- Wired UK website (owned by Condé Nast Publications)
- Wired image board
- Wired Italy website
- "WIRED Store"
- "WIRED Business Conference"
- Wired Netvibes Universe
- Back Catalog Article Listing/Rating
- NextFest
- The 'Future of Green' at WIRED NextFest
- Wired Science TV show on PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
- VIDEO Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich on designing the magazine- on [ABCFora]
- "Wired UK: what nearly happened", an article on the rise and fall of Wired UK
- The short-lived Wired UK
- List of Wired UK employees
- Wired UK archive - reproduces some of the articles that appeared in the magazine.
- Wired Magazine Covers Timeline
- Wired circulation and demographics