Wired is a monthly American magazine, published
in print and online editions, that focuses
on how emerging technologies affect culture,
the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé
Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco,
California, and has been in publication since
March/April 1993. Several spin-offs have been
launched, including Wired UK, Wired Italia,
Wired Japan, and Wired Germany.
In its earliest colophons, Wired credited
Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan as
its "patron saint." From its beginning, the
strongest influence on the magazine's editorial
outlook came from techno-utopian cofounder
Stewart Brand and his associate Kevin Kelly.From
1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News
(which publishes at Wired.com) had separate
owners. However, Wired News remained responsible
for republishing Wired magazine's content
online due to an agreement when Condé Nast
purchased the magazine. In 2006, Condé Nast
bought Wired News for $25 million, reuniting
the magazine with its website.
Wired contributor Chris Anderson is known
for popularizing the term "the Long Tail",
as a phrase relating to a "power law"-type
graph that helps to visualize the 2000s emergent
new media business model. Anderson's article
for Wired on this paradigm related to research
on power law distribution models carried out
by Clay Shirky, specifically in relation to
bloggers. Anderson widened the definition
of the term in capitals to describe a specific
point of view relating to what he sees as
an overlooked aspect of the traditional market
space that has been opened up by new media.The
magazine coined the term "crowdsourcing",
as well as its annual tradition of handing
out Vaporware 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 Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe,
along with Ian Charles Stewart, 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 an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog
and the Whole Earth Review and brought with
him contributing writers from those publications.
Six authors of the first Wired issue (1.1)
had written for Whole Earth Review, most notably
Bruce Sterling (who was highlighted on the
first cover) 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 and whose article
"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" in issue
1.4 resulted in the publication being banned
in Singapore.Wired cofounder 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, Wired's 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
how to install a bozo filter. The last page,
a column written by Nicholas Negroponte, was
written in the style of an email message but
contained obviously fake, non-standard email
addresses. By the third issue in the fall
of 1993, the "Net Surf" column began listing
interesting FTP sites, Usenet newsgroups,
and email 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 (Wired's
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, cofounding
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 spawned
websites Webmonkey, the search engine HotBot,
and a weblog, Suck.com. In June 1998, the
magazine launched a stock index, the Wired
Index, called the Wired 40 since July 2003.
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, which quickly
sold off the company in pieces. Wired was
purchased by Advance Publications, which assigned
it to Advance's subsidiary, New York-based
publisher Condé Nast Publications (while
keeping Wired's editorial offices in San Francisco).
Wired Digital (wired.com, hotbot.com, webmonkey.com,
etc.) was purchased by Lycos 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 bubble and found
new direction under editor-in-chief Chris
Anderson in 2001, making 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 encyclopedias 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,
and David Byrne.
In 2005, Wired 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.In 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.
Also in 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. In 2010, Wired
released its tablet edition.In 2012, Limor
Fried became the first female engineer featured
on the cover of Wired.In May 2013, Wired joined
the Digital Video Network with the announcement
of five original webseries, including the
National Security Agency satire Codefellas
and the animated advice series Mister Know-It-All.
== 
Website ==
The Wired website, formerly known as Wired
News and HotWired, launched in October 1994.
It split off from the magazine when it 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.Wired.com hosts
several technology blogs on topics in transportation,
security, business, new products, video games,
the "GeekDad" blog on toys, creating websites,
cameras, culture, and science. It also publishes
the Vaporware Awards.
As of February 2018, Wired.com is paywalled.
Users may only access up to 3 articles per-month
without payment.
=== WikiLeaks affair ===
Wired was criticized for its handling of the
Adrian Lamo/Chelsea Manning logs. Wired contributor
Kevin Poulsen used Lamo to obtain transcripts
of the communications between Lamo and Manning
that led to Manning's arrest over the "WikiLeaks"
in 2010. Poulsen released approximately one
third of the logs, but he and Wired editor-in-chief
Evan Hansen refused to release more on grounds
of privacy. The issue became a subject of
controversy, when Poulsen and Hansen attacked
Wired critic Glenn Greenwald.
== NextFest ==
From 2004 to 2008, Wired organized an annual
"festival of innovative products and technologies".
A NextFest for 2009 was canceled.
2004: May 14–16 at the Fort Mason Center,
San Francisco
2005: June 24–26 at Navy Pier, Chicago
2006: September 28–October 1 at the Jacob
K. Javits Convention Center, New York City
2007: September 13–16 at the Los Angeles
Convention Center, Los Angeles
2008: September 27–October 12 at Millennium
Park, Chicago
== Supplement ==
Geekipedia is a supplement to Wired.
== Contributors ==
Wired's writers have included Jorn Barger,
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, Cory Doctorow, Esther
Dyson, Mark Frauenfelder, Simson Garfinkel,
William Gibson, Dan Gillmor Mike Godwin, George
Gilder, Lou Ann Hammond, Chris Hardwick, Virginia
Heffernan, Danny Hillis, John Hodgman, Steven
Johnson, Bill Joy, Richard Kadrey, Leander
Kahney, Jon Katz, Jaron Lanier, Lawrence Lessig,
Paul Levinson, Steven Levy, John Markoff,
Wil McCarthy, Russ Mitchell, Glyn Moody, Belinda
Parmar, Charles Platt, Josh Quittner, Spencer
Reiss, Howard Rheingold, Rudy Rucker, Paul
Saffo, Adam Savage, Evan Schwartz, Peter Schwartz,
Alex Steffen, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling,
Kevin Warwick, Dave Winer, and Gary Wolf.
Guest editors have included director J. J.
Abrams, filmmaker James Cameron, architect
Rem Koolhaas, former US President Barack Obama,
director Christopher Nolan, tennis player
Serena Williams, and video game designer Will
Wright.
== See also ==
Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
