Wired magazine is a full-color monthly magazine and on-line periodical published in San Francisco, California since March 1993.
It reports on digital technology and culture, examining how they affect mainstream culture and politics. Its editorial stance was partly inspired by the ideas of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, credited as the magazine's "patron saint" in early colophons.
Wired has both been admired and disliked for its strong libertarian principles, its enthusiastic embrace of techno-utopianism, and its sometimes experimental layout and heavy use of color.
The magazine was founded by American journalist Louis Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe in 1993 with initial backing from industry pundit Nicholas Negroponte of the MITMedia Lab, who was a regular columnist for six years, through 1998.
Wired was a great success at its launch and was compared to Rolling Stone for its innovation and cultural impact.
The magazine was quickly followed by a companion website, HotWired, a book publishing division, Hardwired, and a short-lived British edition, Wired UK. In June 1998, the magazine even launched its own stock index, The Wired Index, since July 2003 called The Wired 40.
In May 1998, the founders' company, Wired Ventures, sold Wired to Advance Magazine Publishers, to be published by Advance's subsidiary, New York-based publisher Condé Nast (while still making the magazine in San Francisco).
The fortune of the magazine and allied enterprises corresponded closely to that of the dot-com boom.
In late 1999 and 2000, Rossetto and the other participants in Wired Ventures twice tried to take the company public with an IPO, but had to withdraw owing to a lack of interest within the investment community.
Rossetto was eventually forced out in 2000.
Since the crash of the dot-com boom, Wired lost much of its impact and has had to compete with the multitude of technology reporting and sources available on the Internet.
