Kevin Kelly (born 1952) is the founding executive editor of ''Wired'' magazine and a former editor and publisher of the ''

Whole Earth Review ''Whole Earth Review'' (''Whole Earth'' after 1997) was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the '' Whole Earth Software Review'' (a supplement to the '' Whole Earth Software Catalog'') and the '' CoEvolution Quarterl ...

''. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and

digital culture Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence ...

Life

Kelly was born in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, United States, in 1952, and graduated from Westfield High School,

Westfield, New Jersey Westfield is a Town (New Jersey), town in Union County, New Jersey, Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, located southwest of Manhattan. As of the 2020 United States census, the town's population was 31,032, an increase of 716 (+2.4% ...

, in 1970. Through his father, an executive for ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' who used

systems analysis Systems analysis is "the process of studying a procedure or business to identify its goal and purposes and create systems and procedures that will efficiently achieve them". Another view sees systems analysis as a problem-solving technique that ...

in his work, Kelly developed an early interest in

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

. He attended the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of Rhode Island. The univer ...

for one year, studying geology. Kelly has traveled extensively, backpacking in Asia. While travelling in the Middle East, he had a conversion experience and became a born-again Christian. He was raised Catholic. He lives in

Pacifica, California Pacifica (, meaning "Peaceful") is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay, California, Half Moon Bay. Overview The City of Pacifica is spread along a stretch of sandy c ...

, a small coastal town just south of

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. He is married to the biochemist Gia-Miin Fuh and has three children: Kaileen, Ting, and Tywen. Among Kelly's personal involvements is a campaign to make a full inventory of all living species on earth, an effort also known as the Linnaean enterprise. He is also sequencing his genome and co-organizes the Bay Area

Quantified Self Quantified self is both the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers". Quantified self practices overlap with the pract ...

Meetup Meetup, headquartered in New York City, is a social media platform and social networking service for hosting and organizing in-person and virtual activities, gatherings, and events for people and communities of similar interests, hobbies, and pro ...

Group.

Career

Kelly began contributing freelance articles to '' CoEvolution Quarterly'' in 1980, while living in

Athens, Georgia Athens is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. Downtown Athens lies about northeast of downtown Atlanta. The University of Georgia, the state's flagship public university and an Research I university, ...

. Around this time, he was also editing his own start-up magazine called ''Walking Journal'', and working in an epidemiology laboratory to support himself. He was hired in 1983 by Whole Earth founder

Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American project developer and writer, best known as the co-founder and editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He has founded a number of organizations, including the WELL, the Global Business Networ ...

to edit some of the later editions of the ''

Whole Earth Catalog The ''Whole Earth Catalog'' (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by author Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays ...

'', the ''

'', and ''Signal''. With Brand, Kelly helped found the

WELL A well is an excavation or structure created on the earth by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...

, an influential

virtual community A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual commu ...

. As director of the Point Foundation, he co-sponsored the first Hackers Conference in 1984. In 1992, Kelly was hired by Louis Rossetto to serve as executive editor of ''Wired'', which was launched in March 1993. He brought to the magazine the cybernetic social vision of the Whole Earth publications and their networked style of editorial work, while also recruiting writers and editors from the WELL. He stepped down as executive editor in 1999; his current job title at ''Wired'' is Senior Maverick. Partially due to his reputation as ''Wired''s editor, he is noted as a participant in and an observer of

cyberculture Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence ...

. Kelly's writing has appeared in many other national and international publications such as ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'', ''

Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. ''Harper's Magazine'' has ...

'', ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

'', '' Veneer Magazine'', '' GQ'', and ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...

''. His photographs have appeared in ''

Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

'' and other American national magazines. As well as serving as editor on many publications, Kelly has written many novels surrounding his interest in cybernetics and all things tech. He is known for coining the term "The Technium," the accumulation of all technologies and inventions as a working, living system. Much of his work revolves around technology as a "living organism." He even refers to "The Technium" as the seventh kingdom of nature, that is self-organizing and autonomous. Kelly's book-length publication, '' Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World'' (1992), presents a view on the mechanisms of complex organization. The central theme of the book is that several fields of contemporary science and philosophy point in the same direction: intelligence is not organized in a centralized structure but much more like a bee-hive of small simple components. Kelly applies this view to bureaucratic organisations, intelligent computers, and to the human brain. He helped found the All Species Foundation. He was a futurist adviser on the

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...

-directed movie '' Minority Report''. Kelly has a chapter giving advice in

Tim Ferriss Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru. He is known for his ''4-Hour'' self-help book series—including ''The 4-Hour Work Week'', ''The 4-Hour Body'', and ''The 4-Hour Ch ...

's book '' Tools of Titans''.

Select works

Books

* '' Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World'' (Basic Books, 1992; Fourth Estate, 1995) * ''New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World'' (Penguin, 1999) * "Photographers section: Kevin Kelly," pp. 106–111, in Lloyd Kahn, editor 2004 ''Home Work'' (Shelter Publications, 2004) * ''True Films'' (2006) * "Forward: 1000 True Fans," pp. 3–8, in ''Be The Media'', David Mathison, editor, (2009) * '' What Technology Wants'' (2010) * ''Cool Tools'' (2013) – Tool reviews collected from his

weblog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

of the same name in large scale format similar to ''Whole Earth Catalog'' * '' The Inevitable'' (2016) * ''Vanishing Asia: Three Volume Set: West, Central and East''. Photographs, text and design by Kevin Kelly (1084 pages) (2021)

Photography and art

* ''Asia Grace'' (2002) * ''Bad Dreams'' (2003) * ''Bicycle Haiku'' (1995)

Lectures

''Speculations on the Future of Science'' by Kevin Kelly
Lecture to

Long Now Foundation The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is an American non-profit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster ...

, at Fort Mason in San Francisco. March 10, 2006.
Next Fifty Years of Science'' by Kevin Kelly
Google TechTalk, May 9, 2006. (47 minutes)
''How Technology Evolves'' by Kevin Kelly
Talk at the TED Conference in Monterey, CA, February 2005. (21 minutes)
''The next 5000 days of the Web'' by Kevin Kelly
Talk at the EG 2007 Conference in Monterey, CA, December 2007.
''Technium Unbound'' by Kevin Kelly
SALT Talk for The Long Now Foundation. November 12, 2014.
''Cool Tools at XOXO'' by Kevin Kelly
Talk at XOXO Festival 2014, Portland, OR.

References

Works cited

External links

Kelly's personal site

Kevin Kelly's Blog, The Technium

Kevin Kelly. ''

Christianity Today ''Christianity Today'' is an evangelical Christian media magazine founded in 1956 by Billy Graham. It is published by Christianity Today International based in Carol Stream, Illinois. ''The Washington Post'' calls ''Christianity Today'' "eva ...

''. December 2002.
Kelly's Vision of the Future of Cinema

Audio Kevin Kelly has a revelation.
* * *
"How technology evolves" (TED2005)
*
"The next 5,000 days of the web"EG conference
2007) *
"Technology's epic story" (TEDxAmsterdam 2009)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Kevin 1952 births Living people 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers Activists from California American futurologists American male journalists American non-fiction environmental writers Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area Journalists from California People from Pacifica, California American philosophers of technology Westfield High School (New Jersey) alumni People from Westfield, New Jersey Whole Earth Catalog Wired (magazine) people Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area