I'm Steve Silberman, and I'm a contributing editor at Wired magazine. My features appear regularly there and in other magazines, and are linked here when they're published on the Web. I also co-host several conferences on The Well, one of the most perspicacious and longest-lasting online communities.

I was the editorial consultant for Closing the Innovation Gap: Reigniting the Spark of Creativity in a Global Economy by Judy Estrin, a pioneering Internet engineer, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former CTO of Cisco Systems. To be published fall 2008.

My email address is steve-at-stevesilberman-dot-com. Please do not add me to email lists without my consent, but personal correspondence is welcome if you're forgiving of brief replies.

"I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy."
-- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

"Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste."
-- Theodore Roethke

"Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude."
-- William Butler Yeats

Walt Whitman,
a Kosmos

Allen Ginsberg's
Scrap Leaves
The poet's rare 1968
handwritten manuscript.

Recent Features

• Offshore Drawing
  Dwell magazine, May 2008
  How outsourcing and an innovative technique for simulating the life-span and energy use of human environments called Building Information Modeling are transforming the practice of architecture worldwide.
• The Only Choice is Kindness
  Shambhala Sun cover story, January 2008
  A profile of Sylvia Boorstein, Buddhist teacher and author of Happiness is an Inside Job, It's Easier Than You Think, That's Funny You Don't Look Buddhist, and other bestselling books on mindfulness, loving-kindness ("metta") meditation, and life as a Buddhist Jew. [Download the PDF if you prefer.]
• Oliver Sacks on Earworms, Stevie Wonder, and the View from Mescaline Mountain
  Wired magazine, 15.10, October 2007
  A probing interview with neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In anticipation of his new book Musicophilia, we talk about how the brain processes music, musical disorders and hallucinations, his own psychedelic experiences, Darwin, Mozart, the neurological danger of music in public places, and why music can act as a catalyst of mystical experience even for atheists. In an online-only extra, Sacks' IPod Playlist, the good doctor compiles his own list of desert-island recordings, with marvelous annotations: "Here again, Bach's piece was a musical and moral declaration, an affirmation of the transcendence of art in the face of violence and fear."
• The King of Mo-Cap
  Wired magazine, 15.10, October 2007
  A conversation with Andy Serkis, who won acclaim for his role as Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, about the future of acting in the age of digital cinema.
• Where is Jim Gray?
  Inside the High-Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend
  Wired magazine, 15.08, August 2007
  On January 28, 2007, Microsoft researcher Jim Gray and his sailboat Tenacious vanished off the coast of San Francisco. There was no sign of trouble and no distress call. A digital pioneer whose work helped make possible e-commerce, cash machines, and deep databases like Google, Gray became the object of a heroic search-and-rescue mission organized by scientists and top executives at Microsoft, Oracle, NASA, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Despite the best efforts of the Coast Guard, Gray's brilliant friends, and more than 12,000 volunteers on Amazon.com who helped analyze satellite data of the Pacific, not a trace of the programmer or his boat has been found. What happened? Includes interviews with Gray's wife Donna Carnes, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, astronomer Alex Szalay, oceanographer Jim Bellingham, and Coast Guard commander David Swatland.
• Terra Cognito
  Shambhala Sun, July 2007
  A review of Sharon Begley's Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, which discusses the discovery of neuroplasticity -- the brain's ability to change its form and function in response to injury, illness, or directed attention and effort -- and its implications for Buddhist meditators, musicians, athletes and others.
• The Invisible Enemy
  Wired magazine, 15.02, February 2007
  The first in-depth media investigation of an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among American troops who fought in the Iraq war that has spread into civilian hospitals in the US and Europe. Since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, more than 700 US soldiers -- plus a significant number of British and Canadian troops and Iraqi civilians -- have been infected or colonized with an organism called Acinetobacter baumannii. Now on the rise in hospitals worldwide, the bacteria infects people who are already weak or sick (particularly the elderly, burn victims, newborns, and patients in ICUs) causing blood and bone infections, and in many cases, death. For years, the Defense Department claimed that the source of this bacteria is Iraqi soil blown into soldiers' wounds by IED attacks. Interviews with current and former military medical staff, and the Pentagon's own internal reports, however, reveal that the primary source of these infections was contaminated healthcare facilities along the "evacuation chain" that transports wounded soldiers out of Iraq. "For an aspiring superbug, war is anything but hell." [See also the online-only sidebar Requiem for the Magic Bullets.]
• California Seekin'
  Shambhala Sun, January 2007
  A review of Visionary State, Erik Davis and Michael Rauner's history of spiritual movements on the West Coast, from the sublime to the absurd.
• The Outsider
  Wired magazine, 14.11, November 2006
  The making of Darren Aronofsky's controversial science-fiction film The Fountain. Seven years ago, indie-film prodigy Aronofsky -- director of Pi and the Oscar-winning Requiem for a Dream -- set out to make a love story that would span a thousand years, explore essential questions about life and death, and reinvent the cinematic representation of outer space in the process, without relying on computer graphics. Along the way, Brad Pitt quit the lead role over script issues and funding for the film collapsed. How Aronofsky resurrected his ambitious project and employed the imagery of microphotography pioneer Peter Parks to create the most visually original depiction of space travel since 2001 and Star Wars.
• Scientific Fiction
  Wired magazine, 14.11, November 2006
  A brief interview with novelist Richard Powers, MacArthur fellow and acclaimed author of The Gold Bug Variations, Plowing the Dark, Gain, and The Time of Our Singing. His new book, The Echo Maker, winner of the National Book Award for fiction, focuses on a fascinating neurological disorder called Capgras Syndrome, building a compelling mystery story from new insights into how the brain compiles a stable sense of self from the raw data of the senses.
• Married to the Guru
  Shambhala Sun cover story, November 2006
  A conversation with Diana Mukpo, the widow of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Naropa University and one of the most influential and controversial Buddhist teachers of the modern era. [Download the PDF.]
• Don't Try This at Home
  Wired magazine, 14.06, June 2006
  Do-it-yourself chemistry has always played a crucial role in boosting kids' interest in science -- from chemistry sets, to Mr. Wizard's home demonstrations, to chem labs at school. Now, however, new laws sparked by fears of terrorism, the war on drugs, and concerns about safety are putting an end to amateur chemical experimentation. Classic chemistry sets have all but disappeared, and some online vendors are facing prison sentences for selling common chemicals used in science fairs and model rocketry. An in-depth exploration of the effects of "chemophobia" on science and education, featuring interviews with Bill Nye (the Science Guy), Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, Nobel-winning chemist Roald Hoffman, leading science educator Bassam Shakhashiri, Popular Science columnist Theodore Gray, and Shawn Carlson of the Society for Amateur Scientists.
• Don't Even Think About Lying
  Wired magazine, 14.01, January 2006
  What if a government interrogator could tell you were lying before you opened your mouth? A look at the effort to build a new, highly accurate generation of lie-detection technologies based on brain scanning methods like fMRI, focusing on the work of Daniel Langleben and Britton Chance at the University of Pennsylvania. For nearly a century, US law enforcement and intelligence agencies have relied on the polygraph to detect deception. Despite the polygraph's unreliability, its use has greatly expanded in the post-9/11 era. In 2006, two startups called Cephos and No Lie MRI will start offering fMRI lie detection as an alternative to the polygraph for use by federal agencies, foreign governments, and criminal defendants who seek to prove their innocence. What are the implications for privacy, security, and civil liberties? (Update: This article has been translated by the US State Department into Hindi and Urdu for reprinting in their magazine Span.)
• Life After Darth
  Wired magazine cover story, 13.05, May 2005
  Now that Star Wars is finished, George Lucas says that he wants to return to the kind of experimental filmmaking he pursued with his first feature, THX 1138. After 30 years of mainstream success, how serious is he about making what he describes as "esoteric, personal films"? An in-depth examination of a previously unexplored dimension of the director's life, focusing on his immersion in the edgy first wave of independent cinema, including the work of Stan Brakhage, Arthur Lipsett, Jordan Belson, and Norman McLaren. Features interviews with Lucas and his peers and critics, including Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, film critic Roger Ebert, and sound designer/editor Walter Murch. In this online-only continuation of my conversation with Lucas, the director talks about his changing relationship to his most famous creation, good vs. evil and Fahrenheit 9/11, and public mythmaking.
• The Painful Truth
  Wired magazine, 13.02, February 2005
  More wounded soldiers are surviving their combat wounds in the Iraq War than in previous conflicts, but because of advances in modern weaponry, body armor, and medical evacuation procedures, Operation Iraqi Freedom is also a new kind of hell -- a litany of exploded muscles, shattered bones, and amputated limbs. A look at breakthrough anesthesia techniques (including continuous peripheral nerve blocks) explored on the front lines by Dr. Chester "Trip" Buckenmaier of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and their potential for preempting phantom-limb and other forms of chronic pain in veterans decades from now.
• The War Room
  Wired magazine, 12.09, September 2004
  The first look inside the Pentagon's new way to train soldiers for battle: semi-virtual environments designed by a think tank called the Institute for Creative Technologies that can synthesize combat conditions on the ground in Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan, designed by Hollywood special-effects artists. The Joint Fires and Effects Trainer System is the ultimate immersive war game and the future of home theater systems -- and the young recruits being trained in JFETS are just weeks away from Baghdad. The Army's chief scientist told ICT: "Build us a holodeck." (Update: This article has been translated into Mandarin and reprinted in the May 2005 issue of GQ Taiwan.)
• The Key to Genius
  Wired magazine, 11.12, December 2003
  Jazz pianist Matt Savage has released four albums and performed on the Today show, NPR, and at New York's famed Blue Note jazz club. He's also 11 years old. Savage is a "musical savant," born with a mild form of autism. An in-depth examination of what the brains of rare prodigies like Savage tell us about the biological nature of intelligence and creativity, including interviews with neurologist Oliver Sacks and Darold Treffert, the author of Extraordinary People: Understanding Savant Syndrome.
• Taming the Electricity Beast
  Wired magazine, 11.11, November 2003
  An editorial criticizing the Bush administration's energy policy, stressing the need to incorporate more small-scale, environmentally sound power sources into the grid. An expanded version of the ideas in this piece can be found in my 2001 cover story, "The Energy Web."
• Matrix²
  Wired magazine cover story, 11.05, May 2003
  The original Matrix brought a new level of realism to special effects. For a scene in the first sequel, Reloaded, visual effects supervisor John Gaeta had to achieve the holy grail of computer graphics: the photorealistic rendering of known human faces. This massive fight scene, code-named "the Burly Brawl," is the most impressive deployment of virtual cinematography to date. The first in-depth look inside ESC, the stealth visual effects company launched to make the Matrix sequels.
• The Bacteria Whisperer
  Wired magazine, 11.04, April 2003
  A profile of MacArthur-winning microbiologist Bonnie Bassler and her discoveries in the young field of "quorum sensing" -- the study of a system of molecular communication employed by bacteria to make collective decisions, such as delaying the unleashing of virulence until a critical mass of microbes is reached. The ability to conspire and cooperate, it appears, is basic to all life.
• Science and Spirit
  Wired magazine, 10.12, December 2002
  For a special issue on science and religion, I spoke with scientists, technologists, and writers -- including Oliver Sacks, Roald Hoffman, Larry Wall, Lynn Margulis and others -- about their spiritual lives.
• The United States of America v. Adam Vaughn
  Wired magazine, 10.10, October 2002
  A deep and unsettling look at an FBI dragnet called Operation Candyman, focusing on the case of a former Marine and small-town cop who was one of over 100 people arrested for accessing child pornography online in the spring of 2002. (Update: Two federal judges found in March 2003 that the FBI had engaged in "reckless" misconduct during Operation Candyman, "misleading" prosecutors and using "false information" to obtain the search warrants in these cases. My article was the first in a national publication to question the integrity of these warrants.)
• The Fully Immersive Mind of Dr. Oliver Sacks
  Wired magazine, 10.04, April 2002
  An intimate profile of the neurologist-author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, and other tales from the borderlands of the mind. A comprehensive look at Dr. Sacks' work in the context of the role of anecdote in medical practice and evolving models of the brain. (Update: This article has been selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003, edited by Richard Dawkins, coming out in November from Houghton Mifflin. It has also been translated into Italian, and is available as a PDF file on Adelphiana.)
• The Geek Syndrome
  Wired magazine, 9.12, December 2001
  An examination of the possible role of genetics in a rise in diagnoses of autism among children in Silicon Valley, including a history of the persistent and provocative association between autistic people and technology. For this story, I received a media award from the Cure Autism Now foundation in January 2002 for increasing public understanding of autism and Asperger's Syndrome. (Update: This issue of Wired was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. With the publication of Time magazine's cover story, "The Secrets of Autism," on May 6, 2002, the phrase geek syndrome, coined by Wired editor Bob Cohn as the headline for my article, seems to have entered wide use.)
• The Energy Web
  Wired magazine cover story, 9.07, July 2001
  A practical vision of a new, networked "smart" power grid emerging from places like EPRI and the nation's energy labs. This piece was published when most of the public discourse on energy was about the threat of blackouts, and anticipated the idea that the problem at hand was not simply generating more power, but generating, transmitting, and using power more intelligently. (Update: The blackouts of 2003 confirmed the warnings in this article about the sad state of the grid, and Jeremy Rifkin's 2002 bestseller The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web elaborates on the central ideas set forth in it, with quotes from the article.)
• The New Hot Medium: Paper
  Wired magazine, 9.04, April 2001
  A profile of an ambitious Swedish company called Anoto building a global network that will allow writing or drawing on paper to become part of the digital datastreams. This article was reprinted in The Best Business Stories of the Year, 2002, edited by Andrew Leckey and Ken Auletta, from Vintage Press.
• Talking to Strangers
  Wired magazine cover story, 8.05, May 2000
  Soon computers will be able to perform instantaneous translation from one language to another, they say -- as they've been saying for 50 years. True? A comprehensive look at the historical development, promise, and pernicious limitations of machine translation, including an exploration of why language isn't just another form of code.
• Just Say Nokia
  Wired magazine cover story, 7.09, September 1999
  Why has Scandanavia been the laboratory of our technological future? An in-depth investigation of Nokia and the role of the GSM standard in the evolution of the telecom culture of Finland, including an interview with Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila.

  My writing has also been published in Time, The New Yorker, Dwell, Salon, The Shambhala Sun, Tikkun, the Whole Earth Review, and many other national publications. Links to older features can be found in the archive below.

Books

Music-Related Links

A Scattered Archive of Old Writing and Miscellany
for the Relentlessly Curious

In 1995, I gave a little rambling talk on the successful hosting of online forums, archived for The WELL's hosts-on-hosting page, called The Underdog Carries the Secret.