Levy, Steven 1951–

PERSONAL:

Born January 26, 1951, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Lester (a sales representative) and Helen Levy; married Teresa Carpenter (a journalist), 1988; children: Andrew. Education: Temple University, B.A., 1972; Pennsylvania State University, M.A., 1974. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Cyberspace exploration, baseball sabermetrics, modern literature, blues guitar, steel lunch boxes from the 1960s.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Dominick Abel, 146 W. 82nd St., Ste. 1B, New York, NY 10024. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, critic, and publisher. Newsweek, New York, NY, senior editor and chief technology writer. Fellow, Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, 1994-95.

MEMBER:

Authors Guild, Computer Press Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

New Jersey Sigma Delta Chi competition winner, 1978, for "My Search for Einstein's Brain"; National Magazine Award finalist, 1979, for "ETS and the Coaching Controversy"; Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, 1979, for "Emergency Medical Services"; Best Column or Opinion Piece Award, Computer Press Association, 1988; Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, 1992, for "Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation"; Frankfurt Award, International E-Book Award Foundation, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Doubleday/Anchor (New York, NY), 1984.

The Unicorn's Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius, Prentice Hall (New York, NY), 1988, with new epilogue by Levy, Onyx (New York, NY), 1999.

Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1992.

Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything, Viking (New York, NY), 1994.

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

The Perfect Thing: How the IPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including MacWorld, Wired, Esquire, New Yorker, Harper's, New York, New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, Washington Post, Panorama, TV Guide, Video, Channels of Communication, and Whole Earth Review. Contributing senior editor, New Jersey Monthly, 1977-79; columnist, Popular Computing, 1982-85; contributing editor, Rolling Stone, 1982-87; domain editor, Whole Earth Software Catalog, and contributing editor, Whole Earth Software Review, 1983-84.

SIDELIGHTS:

As chief technology writer for Newsweek magazine, Steven Levy is a specialist in computers and their evolution and a chronicler of the scientists, hackers, and mathematicians who have contributed to the advancement of computer technology. In Business Week, a critic cited Levy's "mastery of the arcane world of computer security and cryptography," while a Kirkus Reviews writer declared Levy to be "among our best interpreters of computer technology," adding that the author "speaks fluent geek." Calling Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution "the best introduction to the unleashing of the personal computer bar none," Salon.com reviewer Andrew Leonard added that Levy "enjoys a reputation as one of the premier chronicler of all things digital…. [He] can explain complex subjects, bring to life the driest geek and weave narrative out of the most unlikely of technological obscurities."

Levy's first book, the bestselling Hackers, examines the origins of computer culture in the United States and relates the stories of some of its major founders. In Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything, Levy tells the story of Steven Jobs and the engineers at Apple who changed the direction of microcomputing. The computer they designed and introduced in 1984, the Macintosh, revolutionized the user-machine interface. According to John Schwartz in the Washington Post Book World, the "Mac" moved far beyond the generation of computer "beasts, with green letters on a black screen and a rude beep" and created a "machine that appeals to its fans' inner child." "You could sit down to work at a Macintosh without reading the manual," explained James K. Glassman in the Times Literary Supplement. "As Steven Levy puts it in the delightful Insanely Great: ‘Compared to the phosphorescent garbage heap of DOS [IBM's system]—an intimidating jumble of letters and commands—the world one entered into when flicking on a Macintosh was a clean, well-lit room, populated by wry objects, yet none so jarring that it threatened one's comforting sense of place. It welcomed your work.’"

In Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation Levy examines an aspect of the microcomputer revolution: the creation of programs that model the behavior of living organisms. Through computer models, explained Brian Rotman in the Times Literary Supplement, biologists can produce models of evolutionary behavior, including parasitism, predation, and certain forms of social behavior. On the other end of the spectrum, Rotman continued, artificial life can provide a model for a self-reproducing machine—a computer that can create other computers and even change itself. "Levy's book is hugely informative, covering a lot of ground," Rotman declared.

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age details civilian attempts to invent encryption codes for use in computer and Internet transactions. Levy profiles Whitfield Diffie, a computer wizard who helped to invent Internet computer security—and who in doing so ran afoul of the U.S. government, specifically the National Security Agency (NSA). Cryptography, the science of coded communication, was monopolized by the NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for much of the twentieth century, until scientists such as Diffie created the means by which computer users could protect their privacy. "Much of Levy's narrative is taken up with the unscrupulous, unconstitutional and menacing efforts of the NSA to cram the genie back into the bottle," noted London Observer contributor John Naughton. "That they failed is a tribute to the doggedness of the researchers and the resoluteness of MIT and Stanford [University] when it came to defending freedom to conduct research and publish the results."

According to a Business Week reviewer, in Crypto, Levy "guides us through 30 years of individual innovation and U.S. government interference. His lively and detailed narrative begins with Diffie's quixotic search for new ways to protect data and ends with the government's admission that Diffie … [had] let the cryptographic genie out of the bottle." Time correspondent Lev Grossman deemed Crypto "meticulous," adding: "It's a great David and Goliath story—humble hackers hoodwink sinister spooks." In Booklist, Gilbert Taylor concluded that "Levy's history is a fascinating intersection of people, privacy, and power."

In The Perfect Thing: How the IPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness Levy chronicles the development and influence of the iPod, a tiny portable device that can hold a user's entire library of recorded music. The user can create specialized playlists or shuffle music at random, and listen just about anywhere. Only five years on the market at the time Levy's book was published, the iPod had already become so popular that it had changed the way music was being consumed and created. The device, Levy writes, "is more than just a hunk of electronics." It is a machine that allows users to create soundtracks for their own lives and thereby change their view of the world. As New York Times Book Review writer Ben Sisario put it, Levy believes that "the iPod represents the ability of technology to transform civilization, and with it human nature."

Though many reviewers shared Levy's enthusiasm for the iPod's many innovative and convenient features, not all were convinced by his view that the device is, as his title suggests, perfect. In fact, several critics considered The Perfect Thing more a love letter than objective analysis. Sisario, who enjoyed the book's engaging narrative style, found its tone sometimes "obsequious" and commented that the text is so enthusiastic that "it sometimes reads like an advertisement for Apple Computer." A writer for Kirkus Reviews expressed a similar opinion, calling The Perfect Thing "an infomercial for a popular product." In a Salon.com review, Farhad Manjoo also noted Levy's pro-iPod bias, but added that the writer also raises important questions about the technology's impact and "mostly manages to find good answers." Though Manjoo was disappointed that Levy does not discuss the idea that "the iPod has … made us more mindlessly consumptive of songs, less attentive to the context and the quality of music," nor the fact that engineers now record music differently to accommodate the needs of those who use iPods in noisy settings, the critic nevertheless considered The Perfect Thing a "fine book."

Levy once told CA: "Until 1981, my subjects were the usual magazine writer's gumbo—rock stars, trend pieces, sports figures, a murder here and there—until I undertook a piece about computer hackers for Rolling Stone and discovered that the people I considered one-dimensional nerds were actually among the most fascinating—and influential—figures of our time. After that story, I eventually shifted my focus to writing about computers (later, to science and technology in general) so I could not only learn more about these people but become part of the computer culture itself.

"I think that the latter part of the 20th century is going to be remembered as a time when the world underwent drastic changes—the time everything went digital. Science and technology are, as Ezra Pound said of literature, ‘news that stays news.’ The same will not apply for a lot of other stories, [which] … will appear quaintly dated a hundred years from now. On the other hand, I think that future generations, enjoying the fruits of the revolution just starting now, will be happy to read about how all this started. This is the major story of our time, and I consider myself lucky to be a journalist and author covering these massive changes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Business, April, 2001, review of Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, p. 50.

Booklist, January 1, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Crypto, p. 892.

Business Week, February 19, 2001, i3720, review of Crypto, p. 22.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1993, review of Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything, p. 1444; August 15, 2006, review of The Perfect Thing: How the IPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, p. 824.

Library Journal, October 1, 2006, Elizabeth L. Winter, review of The Perfect Thing, p. 86.

New York Review of Books, June 21, 2001, Thomas Powers, review of Crypto, p. 51.

New York Times, October 23, 2006, Janet Maslin, review of The Perfect Thing.

New York Times Book Review, December 10, 2006, Ben Sisario, "Playlist Is Character."

Observer (London, England), February 4, 2001, John Naughton, "Can You Keep a Secret?"

Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2000, review of Crypto, p. 57; September 4, 2006, review of The Perfect Thing, p. 56.

Telecom Asia, May, 2001, review of Crypto, p. 50.

Time, January 29, 2001, Lev Grossman, "Ode to Code: How Hackers Saved Your E-mail from the Feds," p. 65.

Times Literary Supplement, April 15, 1994, Brian Rotman, review of Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation, p. 30; May 13, 1994, James K. Glassman, review of Insanely Great, p. 12.

Variety, October 23, 2006, Ben Fritz, review of The Perfect Thing, p. 39.

Washington Post Book World, March 6, 1994, John Schwartz, review of Insanely Great.

Whole Earth, winter, 2000, review of Crypto, p. 49.

OTHER

Atlantic Unbound,http://theatlantic.com/ (May 31, 2007), Toby Lester, interview with Levy.

PCWorld.com,http://www.pcworld.com/ (February 2, 2001), Kim Zetter, "Three Minutes with Steven Levy."

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (January 24, 2001), Andrew Leonard, "Crypto for the People"; (October 23, 2006) Farhad Manjoo, "iPod: I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change."

Steven Levy Home Page,http://www.stevenlevy.com (May 31, 2007).