Institute For The Future

Mark Frauenfelder is a research director at the Silicon Valley think tank, Institute for the Future, and the founder of Boing Boing, a blog about cultural curiosities and interesting technologies, with five million monthly unique viewers and the winner of the Bloggies’ Lifetime Achievement and Best Group Blog awards. 

He was founding editor-in-chief of MAKE, the only magazine exclusively devoted to do-it-yourself technology projects. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Wired Online, and was an editor at Wired magazine and Wired Books from 1993-1998. He is also the editor-in-chief of Cool-Tools.org, a tool review site with roots connected to the Whole Earth Catalog. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University.

As a maker of things, Mark has built cigar box guitars, skateboards, mid-century modern furniture, electronic musical instruments, chicken coops, kinetic sculptures, automated peanut butter stirrers, retro-videogame arcades, and robotic monkeys that keep cats from jumping on furniture. He has conducted workshops that teach people how to make sauerkraut, program Arduino microcontrollers, solder circuit boards, build vibrating toothbrush cars, and construct mandolins from tuna cans.

Mark is also an artist and designer, and his work has appeared in group and solo gallery exhibitions throughout the United States. He designed Billy Idol's "Cyberpunk" CD cover, video box, and print advertisements. He has illustrated several books for national publishers.

He has appeared on The Colbert Report (twice) and the Martha Stewart Show, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Popular Science, Business Week, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, and other national publications.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Carla Sinclair and his two daughters.