'We're creating our own evolutionary next step': Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto on the digital revolution and the death of the megastate.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Culture and Reviews - Interview

IN 1971 A YOUNG writer named Louis Rossetto co-authored a cover story in The New York Times Magazine announcing that young people were turning against the played-out politics of right and left. "Liberalism, conservatism and leftist radicalism are all bankrupt philosophies," the piece proclaimed. "The only question at issue among their adherents is which gang of crooks and charlatans is to rule society, and for what noble purpose.... Freedom of the individual is considered obsolete as a political issue. Nevertheless, advocates of individual freedom not only continue to exist, but are increasing in number."

In 1993, after an adventurous career that included long stretches in Europe and a book on the making of the camp/porn/power classic Caligula, Rossetto, along with Jane Metcalfe, launched Wired, a publication that not only revolutionized magazine design but chronicled, critiqued, and in many ways created the Internet Age. The concept was to cover the real change makers, far from the halls of power in Washington and New York, who were ushering in a transformational era of technology-fueled liberation.

Wired was a critical and commercial hit. Conde Nast purchased the publication in 1997, and Metcalfe and Rossetto raised a family, did angel investing, and ultimately started an award-winning chocolate company called TCHO.

On November 6, 2013, Metcalfe and Rossetto received the inaugural Lanny Friedlander Lifetime Achievement Prize at the Reason Media Awards. The prize, named for reason's founding editor, honors people who have created a distribution platform that expands human freedom by increasing our ability to express ourselves, engage in debate, and generate new ways of understanding the power of free minds and free markets. Shortly after the ceremony--and two decades after the first issue of Wired went to press--Rossetto sat down with Reason TV Editor Nick Gillespie to talk about Wired's vision, the promise of the digital revolution, and why, "in its death throes, the megastate is going to make a lot of mess." For a video version of the interview, go to reason.com or scan the QR code to the left.

reason: The first issue of Wired was January 1993. When you look back, what did you guys get right and what did you get wrong about the future?

Louis Rossetto: It's hard to cast your mind back to that time. The number of computers that were connected to the Internet was in the low millions. We came out and said that there's a digital revolution...