Kevin Kelly
b. 1952 · American writer and editor on technology
Kevin Kelly (born 1952 in Pennsylvania) is an American writer, photographer and editor whose work focuses on technology, cybernetics and digital culture. He was the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, one of the most influential publications covering the internet in the 1990s, and his name is linked to the shift from counterculture to enthusiasm for networks.
Raised in New Jersey, Kelly developed an early interest in cybernetics, partly through his father, a businessman who worked with systems analysis. After a year at the University of Rhode Island he travelled through Asia, and he later wrote for publications such as CoEvolution Quarterly. Working with Stewart Brand, he helped with the Whole Earth publications and the WELL, an early online community.
His book Out of Control (1992) argues that complex systems, from insect colonies to computers, can organise themselves without a central controller. In What Technology Wants (2010) he develops the idea of technology as a kind of living system, which he calls the Technium. His legacy lies in the way he frames networks and in his influence on technology journalism.
Key works
- Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1992): a study of complex systems that organise without central control.
- New Rules for the New Economy (1999): ten strategies for a networked economy.
- What Technology Wants (2010): an account of technology as an evolving system.
- The Inevitable (2016): twelve technological trends that, in his view, will shape the future.
Where to start
What Technology Wants is an accessible starting point for a curious reader with no specialist training. Kelly begins with his own personal experience and presents technology as an extension of life, opening with a chapter that traces his early years and first questions. It is a good entry to his overall thinking about technology.
Next: Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. Out of Control broadens the focus to cybernetics, complex systems and emergence, providing the theoretical framework behind his ideas about technology.
Works in Filopedia
Curiosities
From Whole Earth to Wired
Stewart Brand hired him in 1983 to edit later editions of the *Whole Earth Catalog*. In 1992, Louis Rossetto offered him the post of executive editor of *Wired*.
A coined term
Kelly coined the term "the Technium" to describe the accumulated whole of technologies as a self-organising, living system.
Teachers and influences
Influenced
- Dan Simmons 1948–2026
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.