Kevin Kelly

Editor, writer, photographer, conservationist

Kevin Kelly is an American author, photographer, and editor on technology, the interconnection of life, and issues surrounding new media. He is the founder and editor-at-large for the online publication Wired Magazine, which he co-founded in 1993. Kelly's career in tech began in the 1970s when he became involved in the work of a group of programmers from MIT. They created and developed the Whole Earth Catalog project in the United States. This project was a publication and online resource that was designed to showcase tools and resources related to technology, creativity, and self-sufficiency. In the 1980s Kelly started writing and publishing non-fiction books on tech topics such as the virtual reality world, artificial life, and the future of the Web. During this period, he co-founded and helped launch several tech ventures such as the Network TV streaming video service Equator, The Well (one of the early online forums in the US), and the book publishing company Addison-Wesley Longman. In 1993, Kelly co-founded Wired Magazine, the first successful major magazine solely focused on tech, gadgets, digital culture, and the internet. It was an immediate success. Today Wired has millions of readers and over 600 million monthly pageviews. It is considered to be a pioneering digital publication for it’s consistent quality of content and its use of audio, video, and photography. After his tenure at Wired Magazine ended in 1998, Kelly became a consultant and freelance writer. He wrote several science and technology books, and published his memoir, What Technology Wants, in 2010. Kelly also started The All-Species Data Base, a public database of photos, sounds and observations of all plant and animal species recorded in the wild. This work helped to further perfect the understanding of the interconnection and relatedness of all species in nature. Kelly is considered to be one of the most influential figures in the tech and digital media industry. His career has been marked by his insight, intelligence, and innovation when it comes to understanding and responding to the rapidly changing digital world and in inspiring others to do the same.