How Wired changed how we look at technology

Wired co-founders Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto were interviewed as the technology magazine approaches its 20th anniversary.

While featured in Adweek, it’s actually an original oral history running in Wired’s May 20 anniversary issue from the people who played an instrumental role in launching the magazine’s first issue in 1993.

Here is an excerpt:

At this point, money was running low and Wired was in dire need of capital. Among the many contacts Rossetto and Metcalfe called upon was Nicholas Negroponte. Highly regarded and well connected among the tech elite, Negroponte had founded MIT Media Lab, a fountainhead of new ideas about the networked culture Wired would cover—and he was an extraordinarily successful fundraiser. His assistant told them he was scheduled to attend Richard Saul Wurman’s TED Conference in Monterey, Calif., in February 1992. Unable to afford tickets, Rossetto and Metcalfe traded their help at the event for admission.

Metcalfe: We met with Nicholas at 7:30. He said, “Looking at a business plan this early is like doing a shot of bourbon for breakfast.”

Rossetto: He methodically and silently went page by page through the prototype in that empty, darkened auditorium. When he was finished, he closed the book, looked at the two of us, and asked, “How much money are you looking for?”

Metcalfe: Oh my god! He’s going to help us! It was the most extraordinary thing that had happened to date.

Nicholas Negroponte (senior columnist): My decision to invest in Wired was a moment of bravado. The rest is history.

Read more here.