WIRED

May - June 2025 |

THE MACHINE IN THE MESSAGE STORIES FROM THE FRONTIERS OF COMPUTING Tech companies don’t care whether you know how their products work. In fact, they don’t want you to know. The more you assume technology is conjured into existence by a priest class of techno-mystics whose powers dwarf your own, the more you allow yourself to be controlled by it (and them). Don’t let this happen. Though they seem to get more brain-fryingly complicated every year, computers are not, ultimately, magical devices. They are physics plus engineering, and they’re easy enough to break down. In this special issue—which we’ve arranged along a computer’s famous “layers of abstraction,” from the bitwise logic of circuits and gates up to the fancy products themselves—we go deep inside the modern machine, where incredible things are happening. Freaky-deaky things, yes, but grokkable just the same. So take the plunge. It’s time to get computers, people—before computers get you. —THE EDITORS