Image: Chris Anderson, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from joi’s photostream
Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson is leaving the magazine after 11 years to lead the robotics company he founded, 3D Robotics (blog).
He broke the news at an all-hands Wired staff meeting in San Francisco today. He’ll remain at in his leading role at Wired until parent company Conde Nast finds a new editor-in-chief.
More: Venturebeat, NY Observer.
As Dylan Tweney notes,
3D Robotics has a Facebook page, Twitter account, and domain name (3drobotics.com), but currently no website. Currently, that URL redirects to DIY Drones, another company Anderson founded, which sells kits and parts for people making their own unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — robotic aircraft, essentially. It appears that 3D Robotics is an outgrowth of that company.
The new company is billed as an “amateur UAV superstore,” and is reported to have facilities in San Diego, California and Bangkok, Thailand.
Zings Matt Buchanan at Buzzfeed,
It’s perhaps the end of an era at Wired, which had shifted its coverage further and further from its techno-counter-cultural roots toward a more TED-friendly, utopic technocapitalist bent with Anderson at the helm. (Wired covers this year so far almost exclusively feature white male entrepreneurs and robots. It seems fitting that Anderson is joining their ranks, as an actual white male robot entrepreneur.)
Anderson isn’t the only one leaving Wired today—Wired News Threat Level blog co-founder and editor Ryan Singel is departing to focus on running Contextly. The handy “related links” generating service he founded has been used right here on Boing Boing.