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An Ode to Kevin Kelly
And the founding story of Wired by Louis Rossetto
“Kevin (Kelly) is the very definition of contrarian,” Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto tells me, ahead of my interview with the great man himself.
I had reached out to Louis to ask what I should talk to Kevin about — what was something that I couldn’t possibly know but should definitely ask him about. Louis was wonderfully forthcoming with a rich set of stories, anecdotes and photographs, so I thought I would share them here with you.
The first response that I got from Louis sent me down a rabbit hole — it was how Kevin had spent six months living as though he was to die (which he believed at the time).
Louis had presumed I knew about Kevin’s incredible interview with This American Life that he had done two decades earlier. I had not.
But it proved to be one of the most insightful pieces of research I was to do on Kevin and led to a wonderful opener to our conversation when we did talk here.
“The man is a saint. In the 19th century, he would be the parish priest in a rural Irish village, always challenging his farmer flock with his…
