Paul Boutin (born December 11, 1961 in Lewiston, Maine) is an American magazine writer and editor who writes about technology in a pop-culture context.Boutin, who began writing for Wired in 1997, has written for The New York Times since 2003, covers emerging technologies for MIT's Technology Review, and is a freelancer for Newsweek. From 2009–2010 he covered Internet business and culture for VentureBeat. He was a senior writer and editor for Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag from 2006 to 2008, and a tech columnist for Slate from 2002 to 2008.His work has also appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Republic, MSNBC, Reader's Digest, Adweek, Engadget, Salon.com, Outside, Cargo, Business 2.0, the Independent Film & Video Monthly, InfoWorld and PC World.Before turning pro as a journalist, he spent 15 years as an engineer and manager at MIT, where he worked on Project Athena, and at several Internet-related startup companies in Silicon Valley including Splunk. He lives in Los Angeles, California.