Kevin Kelly

Author, Out Of Control (http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/).

Author, New Rules for the New Economy (http://www.kk.org/newrules/)

Founding editor, Wired Magazine. Former editor, Whole Earth Review.

Cool Tools blog http://www.kk.org/cooltools

• the section on actual tools is stuff I'll probably need to buy at some point.

essay from 1998 on "The Third Culture" - While science and art generate truth and beauty, technology generates opportunities: new things to explain; new ways of expression; new media of communications; and, if we are honest, new forms of destruction. Indeed, raw opportunity may be the only thing of lasting value that technology provides us. It's not going to solve our social ills, or bring meaning to our lives. For those, we need the other two cultures. What it does bring us--and this is sufficient--are possibilities. Technology now has its own culture, the third culture, the possibility culture, the culture of nerds--a culture that is starting to go global and mainstream simultaneously. The culture of science, so long in the shadow of the culture of art, now has another orientation to contend with, one grown from its own rib. It remains to be seen how the lofty, noble endeavor of science deals with the rogue vernacular of technology, but for the moment, the nerds of the third culture are rising. (Hacker)