Steven Levy

Levy hails from Philadelphia, where he began writing for weekly papers, Philadelphia Magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, and also wrote about rock music and sports.⁠[1]

In 1982 Levy published a story in Rolling Stone about computer hackers, which drew him into writing about technology.⁠[1]

In 1984 Levy published Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, a book on computer culture; PC Magazine later named it the best sci-tech book of the previous twenty years.⁠[1][2]

In 1988 he published The Unicorn’s Secret, which became the basis of the NBCNBCNBC (National Broadcasting Company) is an American national commercial broadcast television network. It was founded by RCA in 1926, began as a radio network and later developed television. With ABC and CBS it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it passed to General Electric with RCA in 1986, merged with Universal to form NBCUniversal in 2004, has been controlled by Comcast since 2011, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry miniseries The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer.⁠[1]

In 1992 he published Artificial Life; engineers have said the book inspired them to pursue AI.⁠[1]

In 2001 he published Crypto, an early book on cryptography and digital currency, which won the grand e-book prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book Fair.⁠[1]

In 2008 Levy was inducted as an SVForum Visionary.⁠[1]

Levy’s book In the Plex was named AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry’s best business book of 2011.⁠[1][2]

In 2014 Levy left his writing position at Wired to launch Backchannel on the Medium blogging platform, one of the first publications built on Medium. Condé Nast later acquired Backchannel from Medium and combined it with Wired and Ars Technica in a new Wired Media group; a major reason for the deal was to bring Levy back to the publisher. Levy said at the time of the deal: “We intend to make money.”⁠[3]

Levy is the founder of Backchannel, which is now his weekly Wired newsletter, sent every Friday to subscribers only.⁠[1][2]

On September 1, 2017, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the episode “a16z Podcast: Competing Against Luck,” recorded at a16z’s inaugural Summit event in 2016 and marking the 20th anniversary of The Innovator’s Dilemma. Levy, then editor-in-chief of Backchannel, moderated the conversation between Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and a16z co-founder Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry.⁠[4]

The conversation covers how mistakes of omission — missed companies, products or growth opportunities — can be as costly as mistakes of commission, why business leaders often conclude that disruption will not happen to them, and how frameworks such as jobs-to-be-done and modularity apply to running a business and setting priorities in life. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019, under the title “a16z Podcast | Competing Against Luck.”⁠[4][5]

Levy was chief technology writer and a senior editor at Newsweek, has contributed to Wired since its inception and is now its editor at large, covering technology stories. His work has also appeared in Harper’s Magazine, MacworldMacworldMacworld is an Apple-focused technology publication launched in 1984, offering news, reviews and practical advice as part of Foundry.Open the full entry, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The New Yorker and Premiere.⁠[1][2]

His other books include Insanely Great, The Perfect Thing and Facebook: The Inside Story, and his subjects have included Facebook, GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, the Macintosh and the iPod. He has won several Computer Press Association Awards and a Clarion Award and has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and the Loeb Award.⁠[2][1]

Personal website: https://www.stevenlevy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/StevenLevy (opens in a new window).⁠[2]