Wired Magazine
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http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/ 1993: Wired magazine is launched: "Wired was the ultimate geek magazine"My brother brings a copy for me when he travelled to America.
The Rise and Fall of Wired Magazine
by Stephen Downes, June 14, 1998The edge has gone from Wired and Hotwired, probably never to return. A certain created reality has been packaged, sold, and is now being marketed like Titanic. Heck, it's being marketed with Titanic, just in the way MSNBC is being marked with Deep Impact.
OK, it's all pretty cool. But Wired slowing down and focussing on the monoliths of modern entertainment resembles more an artist standing back to admire (and perhaps appraise) his own painting than it does an artist pushing the limits to create something new. Wired is in effect saying, OK, we're done, isn't this beautiful? How much will you pay for it?
Wired was the ultimate geek magazine. But being geek has nothing in particular to do with what shows you watch or which cartoon characters you identify with. Being geek is rather all about being on the edge, with taking existing concepts or technology and using them to build new realities, virtual or otherwise.
It should be no surprise to find geeks involved in film and video. These are (scripted, two-dimensional) forms of alternative reality. But if I read my geek right, the standard reaction (after admiring the art) is to say something like: but this is too small, it's too limiting.
The sad part is, we're not done. We're not even close to done. We're just starting. While Wired is looking at entertainment, online or otherwise, we will be hacking an online world.
Wired is looking for static phenomena. We are looking at emergent phenomena. Or - as I remember reading four years ago on an enthusiastic web page - Something wonderful is going to happen. You can't take a billion human beings, connect them, and get nothing more out of it than just a cool movie.
Media - of all forms - is the voice of humanity united. It is our species' self-expression. That's why it's so important. The reason why we geeks want to see what comes next, why we want to live out there on the edge, is that we want to see what we - a species - will become. Or, more significantly, what we will make of ourselves.
The responsibilities of the technoshaman never end. Like the shamans of ancient cultures, they must translate the wave forms of other dimensions down into the explicate relatity for the purposes of forecasting the future and charting a safe path through it. And... it's networking the potential of this beam that defines success in spiritual Cyberia. - Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia, p. 141-- http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/downes/wired/welcome.htm
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