Wired

Wired, American magazine, covering technology and its effects on society, founded in San Francisco in 1993.

In the early 1990s the American journalist Louis Rossetto and his partner, Jane Metcalfe, settled in San Francisco with the intent of establishing a magazine devoted to cutting-edge technology. They launched Wired in 1993 as a bimonthly publication featuring articles written by leading authors, journalists, and thinkers. Arriving as the culture of the Internet was on the verge of becoming mainstream, the magazine captured a zeitgeist, and its forward-looking articles, along with a busy and colourful design, captured readers’ attention. In less than one year, Wired began publishing monthly.

Numerous associated ventures followed, including the 1994 debut of HotWired, the first major online publication to feature original, Web-only content. That same year, Wired won the first of several National Magazine Awards for general excellence. In 1998 the magazine was sold to the conglomerate Advance Publications for its Condé Nast magazine publishing group, with the founders no longer attached. Initially, HotWired and other online ventures were sold to the Internet company Lycos, with Wired.com reprinting the magazine’s content through a contractual agreement; in 2006 Condé Nast acquired Wired Digital, the digital unit of the media company Wired Ventures Inc., which was incorporated fully into the company’s operations.

At Condé Nast, Wired shifted away from the philosophical, futurist tone of its early years to focus on how emerging technologies affect business, the economy, politics, and society in general. In 2004 the magazine staged the first Wired NextFest, an annual public exposition devoted to innovations in science, technology, the arts, and other fields.