On Reading Issues of Wired from 1993 to 1995 (2016) | Hacker News Reader

On Reading Issues of Wired from 1993 to 1995 (2016)

newyorker.com

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Once the author is done digging through her vintage Wired magazines, she should find some copies of Mondo 2000. That was like Wired on LSD. Overtly anarchist, hardcore techno-futurist, deep into art and mind-expanding drugs, it was so much more aggressive than the relatively mainstream views of Wired.

One of my favorite interviews ever was in Mondo 2000. They interviewed the Edge, from U2 - but he was interviewed by the band Negativland (he did not know this in advance). Now, at this time, Negativland was in the process of being sued into oblivion by U2's record label. They were a cut-up band, tearing up bits of popular culture and reassembling it in interesting ways, and they were right at the bleeding edge of the then-nascient sampling debate. Negativland had released an album called U2, with a picture of a U-2 spy plane and the name "U2" printed in huge letters filling the cover, while "Negativland" was rendered in much smaller letters - basically, toying with the U2 trademark for artistic purposes. The record also had some U2 samples, although it was mostly just other samples.

Of course, the label sued. And the Edge had sort of heard about it, but didn't really know anything, even though this was supposedly being done in his name. So the band explains what they do, and he's really intrigued and wants a copy of the album, and they tell him he can't have one.

Holy hell, that was hilarious. But that's what Mondo 2000 was. Wired would never do such a stunt.

> Once the author is done digging through her vintage Wired magazines, she should find some copies of Mondo 2000.

http://www.mondo2000.com/

Seconded. Those ads for prototypical "smart drugs" that promised a Brave New World populated by Mozarts and Einsteins. One wonders at an alternative history, in which all tech is optimized for hedonia, aesthetics and sensuality ;)

Also check out Marianne Trench's doc Cyberpunk (1990)

https://archive.org/details/cyberpunk_201410

Patrick Farley's "The Guy I Almost Was" comic has a perspective on those magazines, starting from when he'd read them as an adolescent.

http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

(Warning: it has some NSFW bits -- apropos of cyberculture messages, and of his thinking at various times/ages -- and it's also a longish read, so maybe best for after work, for most of our jobs. Other than that, it's the most accessible critique of cyberculture that I'm aware of. I never read most of those magazines myself, so I can't say how complete it is, but I overlapped with some people from that space who were still trying to position themselves as future visionary elite, much like Farley describes, and it took me a while to figure out.)

Terrific! thnx for sharing, the wheel of fate is inescapable indeed ;)

I'm going to have to dig up that issue - sounds intriguing!

I'm fortunate enough to have a complete run of Mondo 2000 (purchased on Ebay - at the time, I collected and enjoyed a few issues, but missed many of them, too).

I also have huge run of Wired, from the premier issue thru the late 1990s or early 2000s when I finally cancelled my subscription because it basically became a magazine of advertisements (posing as reviews) for products I either didn't want, or couldn't afford (and still can't). It was always like that to an extent, but in the beginning - up until Conde Nast bought it - it was lighter in scope.

Then there's my small, but hopefully will grow, collection of Omni - I was a subscriber as a kid in the 1980s, but I never got the premier issue. I was stoked when I heard it was on Archive.org scanned, but the scans leave a ton to be desired, especially in regards to the artwork. So I decided to start collecting the physical issues, beginning with the premier issue, and the first year (so far, I think I have the first 3 years complete).

There's a few in The Archive as well:

https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=mondo+20...

I remember Mondo 2000 very well - there was nothing like it. It went away and Wired sort of filled the gap just a bit for a little while - the very early issues of Wired were actually pretty interesting. Now not so much.

Then there's 2600 which predates them all.

Came to this thread hoping to find a shoutout to 2600. Am not disappointed. 2600 in its heyday was a beautiful hodgepodge of technoanarchy that was a balm to my teenage soul.

The said interview:

https://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=19

I never came across Mondo 2000 but your comment puts me in mind of Omni magazine, which I have sketchy memories of pooring over in the library in the 90s.

Loved Mondo 2000 as a teen but some of it has aged terribly... really terribly. To see an example do a search for: mondo 2000 R.U. a Cyberpunk?

Even with that, the art design was absolutely amazing and is still a joy to view. Early issues of Wired had some pretty edgy (and often nearly unreadable) design too. Not Mondo 2000 level but certainly reflective of the tech culture of the time. I suspect that some of the advertisements in early issues of Wired weren't for real companies but were fakes to make the magazine appear more popular with advertisers than it was starting out. Anyone remember ads for a company named Origin (not the makers of Ultima and Wing Commander) that didn't seem to have a product?

IMHO, Wired peaked with the Neal Stephenson Hacker Tourist issue. Perhaps what they've become is simply a reflection of the world now and tech's place in it.

It's important to understand that "R.U. a Cyberpunk?" wasn't meant to be taken seriously even at the time -- it was poking fun of the people who read William Gibson novels and the like and then decided to think that's how hackers should act and dress in the real world.

Was it Mondo 2000 that had full-on profile stories of people who didn't exist?

It’s a little sad to look back at the early days of Mondo and Wired when the internet was still a wild, weird, individually empowering space instead of a corporate sponsored surveillance dystopia

Oh, man. I still cherish my original Wired. I grew up in a small town, and it was a breath of fresh air. Openly discussing the hacking of cell phone signals, cell tower changeovers, BBS reviews, and more. And their advertising was nuts, given they hadn't lined up many advertisers they were running their own hypothetical ads for really strange things.

After that first issue, I kept going back for more. I have the first 20 years collected, but fell by the wayside as my kids grew up and stopped selling magazine subscriptions for school. :)

2600 still fits that weird niche about hacking and advertisements for grey market tech

Oh, absolutely! I still remember reading about a fantastical cell-phone-for-every-vehicle concept in 2600. How the engineers had taken the prototype car for a joy ride, and an operator came on to warn them about engine temperatures or some such.

Six months later, On Star was announced.

For years I had a pristine inaugural copy of Wired in a cherished spot in my living room mantle bookcase. My wife threw it out.

My condolences!

Agreed on it being a breath of fresh air. Trudging in knee-deep snow in Upstate New York to pick an issue out of the mailbox was always thrilling – a bright portal into this magical place, far, far, away, called California.

I have a complete set of the first 5 years in a box in my basement. Sometimes I pull out issues from the pre-WWW days and the ads alone are worth the entertainment value.

If archive.org would scan them whole, I'd donate them all in a minute.

I think Jason Scott might be able to help: https://twitter.com/textfiles

The early issues used such weird slick waxy paper that I'm afraid they'll slide right off the scanner... =)

Oh, and they're HEAVY.

But you're right, I should drop him a line.

Hopefully they'll do a better job scanning them, when they do, than whatever happened with Omni magazine - that scan was completely butchered.

>each Day-Glo issue is an offline time capsule from the first dot-com bubble.

My favorite thing about the 90s is how competing products were actually different from one another both in features and in design. These days your choice is between glass slab A and glass slab B. Maybe glass slab B does something really bold and dangerous, like include a headphone jack.

Some random scans from 1994 and onwards:

https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=wired+19...

Just flipping through 1994 issue 11 was pretty amazing: There's a short article about how network interconnect policy changes might affect end users, an blurb on Tektronix getting a patent on rasterizing images, and a large article on Chrysler's "Patriot" hybrid race car, which they were planning on racing at Le Mans (the didn't due to issues with the flywheel energy storage device).

I suppose we've made progress since then...

First discovered Wired on the shelves of our local college. Immediately fell in love, and begged my parents for a subscription. This was during the golden age the article is talking about. Man, those covers – and that paper – were beautiful.

Their online presence was equally inspiring; those intro gifs, the bold graphics. Web Monkey was a great resource for learning to code.

Hot Wired Style [1], by Jeffery Veen, was hugely influential. To this day, technological improvements aside, it's a great example of principled web design.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Hotwired-Style-Principles-Building-Sm...

The article I remember most from that vintage: Gang War in Cyberspace.

https://www.wired.com/1994/12/hacker-4/

This is slightly outside of the 1993 to 1995 range—being December 1996—but I think the best story ever in Wired might be "Mother Earth, Mother Board" (by Neal Stephenson, about the laying of the FLAG undersea fiber optic cable).

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Unfortunately, the online copy no longer has the images!

Edit: I just noticed that Stephenson gives GPS fixes to absurd precision (10 microarcminutes, or about 1.6 cm—on the ocean with a civilian GPS receiver in 1996, before GPS Selective Availability was turned off).

> Edit: I just noticed that Stephenson gives GPS fixes to absurd precision (10 microarcminutes, or about 1.6 cm—on the ocean with a civilian GPS receiver in 1996, before GPS Selective Availability was turned off).

It would seem GPS Selective Availability has been disabled since 2000 [0].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Globa...

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