Alex Wright

Alex Wright is a writer, designer, and researcher whose work explores the history of the information age. His latest book Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper was published by Basic Books in 2026. His previous books include Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages (first published in 2007 and reissued as Informatica by Cornell University Press in 2022). He has also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and Harvard Magazine, among others.

Alex has also led digital project initiatives at companies including The New York Times, Google News, and Hearst Newspapers. From 2008-2019 he was a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts’ MFA program in Interaction Design. He divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and the Hudson Valley.