PAUL BOUTIN

BOUTIN--Paul Edouard. Paul Edouard Boutin died on October 18, 2025, of cancer in Bakersfield, CA, in the company of his wife, Christina Noren, and close friends. A polymorphic polymath, Boutin was a programmer, editor, writer and recording artist whose words appeared in Wired, Slate and The New York Times, whose interactive journalism hung from the walls of SFMOMA, whose tracks streamed on Spotify and whose ideas traveled around the world. A prescient observer of the intersection of technology and culture, Boutin predicted the rise and fall of blogging, the failure of tablets and the eventual ubiquity of free Wi-Fi. With ribald joy, Boutin mentored a younger generation of writers who like him were eager to explore the frontier of journalism on the internet. He was only impatient with those he deemed self-indulgent, ruthlessly editing 1,000-word jeremiads into 100-word blurbs. As Paul Lovecraft, he was a prolific musician, releasing songs even after an operation nicked his vocal chords. He proudly noted his regular royalty payments from Spotify and enjoyed driving into Los Angeles to rehearse and perform with Tombstones in Their Eyes, a label-signed indie band. Paul Edouard Boutin was born on December 11, 1961, alongside his twin brother Danny Robert Boutin in Lewiston, Maine. He graduated from Lewiston High School in 1980. Eager to avoid losing a hand to the lumber mills, he won admission to MIT with the dexterous typing that captured the uncorkable output of his brilliant mind. He studied there for two years before dropping out, working instead as part of the six-person team building Project Athena, a network of workstations supporting 10,000 students which proved to be a crucial testbed for distributed computing technologies that later powered and secured much of the internet. At MIT, Boutin worked for a tech legend named Dan Geer, who sent his protege on a Silicon Valley boondoggle from which Boutin did not return. Geer later told him that was the whole idea. In California, Boutin found his life's work, love, and a treasured community. He lived in Palo Alto and Marin County before settling in San Francisco with Noren, whom he married for the first time in 2000 at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. The couple also lived briefly in New York. After working in Silicon Valley, Boutin found the most meaningful work at HotWired, the online arm of Wired, where he worked first as the engineering manager, then a product manager for HotBot, Wired's early search engine, and LiveWired, an interactive presentation of news and features whose innovations won critical praise. Editors at Wired noticed his columns, which revealed him as a writer with a deep understanding of technology. He made his way to the magazine, where he served as a senior editor and wrote cover stories and front-of-book quips with equal aplomb. After Wired, he ventured back into tech and worked at Splunk, a software company, alongside Noren, then returned to journalism at Valleywag and VentureBeat. Along the way, he struggled with addiction, divorced Noren, found sobriety, and moved to the Los Angeles area where he focused on his music while continuing to write freelance for national publications and technology firms. Boutin grew increasingly committed to political activism, finding a particular talent for training phone bankers. Most recently, he volunteered in service of immigrants' rights. He and Noren remained in touch, and when she moved to Los Angeles and adopted a dog named Buzzy, Boutin began to help with dogsitting. The canine connection rekindled something deeper, and the couple remarried in 2021, 21 years to the day after their first ceremony. While still writing and recording music, Boutin rediscovered his passion for programming, aided by new artificial intelligence tools he delighted in exploring and explaining. He consulted as an AI engineer and strategist in the last year of his life for startups - but only those that passed his sharply honed filter. Boutin and Noren lived together again first in Camarillo Heights, where his brother Danny preceded him in death in March unexpectedly on a visit. Boutin experienced a first brush with cancer in 2024; the couple moved to Bakersfield in 2025, shortly before the return of his illness became apparent. He is survived by Noren and Buzzy; his niece, Stephanie, and her husband Drew (Marin); and his aunt Connie Albert and uncle Ray Bissonnette of Lewiston, Maine. A Catholic funeral Mass will be held at 10am on November 11, 2025 at St. Francis Church in Bakersfield, CA, with a rosary and viewing beforehand at 9:30am. The church will stream the event on Facebook. A remembrance at Boutin and Noren's Bakersfield home will follow. Boutin will be laid to rest at the Mount Calvary Cemetery in Salt Lake City at 11am on November 22, 2025. Donations may be made in Paul's name to the Acacia Center for Justice: https://bit.ly/acaciapaul or to the Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights (CHIRLA): https://bit.ly/paulchirla