I remember first reading wired in 1994 - when it was a wholly different magazine. It was packed full of insightful and interesting articles about the rising tech-scene and it really had a huge effect me. I found it completely inspirational. A mix of social theory, art, design and technology - articles about memetics (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html) and 'the well' (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.05/ff_well.html) .. and a whole host of interesting stuff, that I don't think I'd have been exposed to otherwise.

There was a UK edition for a while, which wasn't profitable enough (eventually leading to it being pulled). I bought every issue and read it religiously.

Then, around the height of the first dot-com bubble - it morphed into a different beast, and in my opinion began to distance itself from its original core readership. It seemed that it was gearing itself as a publication for geeks-with-money, and the articles were also distanced from each other by multiple pages of adverts for the kind of luxury-tech products that only the very rich could afford.

I put up with it for a while, it had a kind of aspirational appeal .. but after a while, became very fed-up with the inverse-proportionality of magazine thickness to interestingness.

The style of the journalism has always involved a degree of wide-eyed hyperbole .. but I think this is understandable. For a long time the magazine championed technology's ability to change the world in an exciting and positive way. There weren't many other publications which were seeking to do the same.

I wouldn't consider buying it now.. it's not the same as it was. I've also noticed that the blog has undergone a change - I'm kind of shocked by the poor level of journalism .. I suppose - like much of the web - the wired blog is trying to attract eyeballs. It's sad, but things aren't like they used to be.

Depends what you mean by "Early Wired" - around '95 it was interesting enough but by '99 or so it had got trashy enough that I stopped reading it regularly.

Fair point - wow, that makes my impression of the brand even more depressing.

Glanced through the wiki; I didn't see much about its amazing journalistic past that sets it apart from today.

Wired is a geeky magazine with sensationalist headlines that nevertheless can be interesting most months. Once again, a woman is complaining because a magazine accurately targets its readers (though, even I was put off by the almost desperate obvious baiting with this month's cover).

When I saw the 'boob' cover on TFA, before seeing the blog title, I knew it was going to be a feminist complaining about how misogynist and mean geeks and the geek ecosystem are.

P.S.: Misogyny is the hatred of women. Most geeks love women! Their lack of presence in the IT world is what makes us surprised to find a competent female in our field... there are so few competent IT people anyway, so the cross-section of two minorities is rare.