Paul Boutin (born December 11, 1961, in Lewiston, Maine) is an American former magazine writer and editor who writes about technology in a pop-culture context.^[1]

Boutin, who began writing for Wired in 1997,^[2] wrote for The New York Times from 2003 to 2013,^[3] covered emerging technologies for MIT's Technology Review,^[4] and was a freelancer for Newsweek.^[5] From 2009 to 2010 he covered Internet business and culture for VentureBeat.^[6] He was a senior writer and editor for Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag from 2006 to 2008,^[7] and a tech columnist for Slate from 2002 to 2008.^[8]

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.^[9]

Before turning pro as a journalist, he spent 15 years as an engineer and manager at MIT, where he worked on Project Athena,^[10] and at several Internet-related startup companies in Silicon Valley including Splunk.^[11] Today he lives in Camarillo, California and works as a strategy consultant to tech startups.