Wired

Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical published in San Francisco, California since March 1993. It reports on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics. more...

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Its editorial stance was originally inspired by the ideas of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, credited as the magazine's "patron saint" in early colophons. Wired has both been admired and disliked for its strong libertarian principles, its enthusiastic embrace of techno-utopianism, and its sometimes experimental layout with its bold use of fluorescent and metallic inks.

From 1998 to 2006, the magazine and Wired News, which publishes at Wired.com, had separate owners. Throughout that time, however, Wired News remained responsible for reprinting Wired magazine's content online due to a business agreement made when Condé Nast Publications 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.

History

The magazine was founded by American journalist Louis Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe in 1993 with initial backing from software entrepreneur Charlie Jackson and industry pundit Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, who was a regular columnist for six years, through 1998. 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, '93 - '98.

Wired was a great success at its launch and 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.

At inception Wired was also often compared to a predecessor, the magazine Mondo 2000. They both shared a creative use of design, and a cyberculture subject matter. Early issues of Wired showed a clear influence of Mondo 2000, but over time the two magazines diverged as Wired developed a more distinctive style. Mondo 2000 retained its more subversive interpretation of cyberculture, while Wired shifted emphasis in an increasingly mainstream direction. Wired also toned down the extremities of design that made it difficult to read. 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 issue, Wired 1.01 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 Wired's cover in its first year.

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