Kevin Kelly: Biography and Books

Kevin Kelly (born 1952) was the co-founder of Wired magazine, for which he is still an editor. He is a former editor and publisher for the Whole Earth Catalog.

Kevin Kelly is an expert in digital popular culture. With Whole Earth's founder, Stewart Brand, he helped found the WELL, an online community reflecting their views and interests. 

He was a director of the Point Foundation, which sponsored the first Hackers Conference in 1984 (before the word "hacker" had negative connotations.)

• One of Kelly's main interests is a campaign to make a full inventory of all living species on earth - the Linnaean enterprise. 

Andy and Larry Wachowski, writers/directors of the The Matrix, required the actors to read Kelly’s book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. This is available as a free online book (see below).

• Many interviews with Kelly are shown in The Ultimate Matrix Collection set. 

Kelly is a board member of The Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock and library that will last 10,000 years. A working prototype of the unique mechanical-digital clock has been built and demonstrated, and a mountain top in eastern Nevada purchased as a site to build the monumental clock. The purpose of the project is to foster long term responsibility. 

Free Online Books by Kevin Kelly

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (Perseus Books, 1995)

New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (Penguin, 1999)

Kevin Kelly also sells some other books as inexpensive PDF files from his web site, including: Bicycle Haiku (2001), Asia Grace (2002), Cool Tools (2003) and Bad Dreams (2003).