I'm the COO of Kitty Hawk, Larry Page and Sebastian Thrun's air taxi company, working on the future of aviation.
Previously, I was CEO of 3DR, the drone pioneer, founder of the Linux Foundation's Dronecode Project, and founder of the DIY Drones and DIY Robocars communities, including the ArduPilot autopilot project. From 2001 through 2012 I was the Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine. Before Wired I was with The Economist for seven years in London, Hong Kong and New York.
I'm the author of the New York Times bestselling books The Long Tail and Free as well as Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.
Awards include: Editor of the Year by Ad Age (2005). Named to the "Time 100," the newsmagazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world (2007). Loeb Award for Business Book of the Year (2007). Wired named Magazine of the Decade by AdWeek for my tenure (2009). Time Magazine's Tech 40 -- The Most Influential Minds In Technology (2013). Foreign Policy Magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers (2013)
I founded GeekDad, BookTour and a few other companies now lost in the mists of time.
My background is in science, starting with studying computational physics and doing research at Los Alamos and culminating in six years at the two leading scientific journals, Nature and Science.
In my misspent youth I was a bit player in the DC punk scene and, amusingly, a band called REM (not that one).
I live in Orinda, California, with my wife and five kids.