Letting the Lotus Bloom

Kevin Kelly was born in 1952 in Pennsylvania. He attended the University of Rhode Island but dropped out after one year. He became a freelance photo journalist. His photographs have appeared in several magazines including Life. In 1981, Kelly founded Walking Journal. He is a former editor of Whole Earth Review, Signal, and some of the later editions of the Whole Earth Catalog. With Whole Earth's founder, Stewart Brand, Kelly helped found the WELL, a highly regarded online community. He has been a director of the Point Foundation, which sponsored the first Hackers Conference in 1984 (before the word "hacker" had its current common, negative connotation).

In 1994, Wired Magazine, for which Kelly was executive director, won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Kelly is now editor at large for the magazine. His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Economist, Time, Harper's Magazine, Science, Veneer Magazine, GQ, and Esquire. He is the author of several books including What Technology Wants, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, and Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World.

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