We didn’t have much money when we launched Wired back in January of 1993, but we needed to get the word out somehow. We couldn’t spend our way into brand recognition, so we orchestrated a guerilla campaign: The week Wired hit newsstands, day-glo posters with just two words were plastered on construction sites, vacant wall space, and buses all over San Francisco, New York, and a few other tech-heavy cities. “GET WIRED!” the ads proclaimed. Never mind that no one knew what Wired was. The point was to get people’s attention, and judging from the newsstand sales, it worked.
(If you want part of the history of that period, read my piece “Get Wired,” which I published earlier this year.)
Fast forward a few decades, and Wired was still a robust voice in the tech world, though I felt it had meandered away from its core with a bit too much lifestyle and gadget coverage, not to mention the adulatory pieces about an industry increasingly beholden not to its customers, but its financial interests. That all changed with Wired’s new editor, Katie Drummond, who took the reins two years ago. Drummond brought a bit of the original rebel voice back to Wired, and she found her true north covering — and eviscerating — Elon Musk’s ridiculous implementation of DOGE earlier this year. She also has taken on the MAHA regime of RFK Jr. and the insanity of longevity influencers, which as the…
