Subbed to wired magazine for the past year. Has it always been like this? | Hacker News Reader

Subbed to wired magazine for the past year. Has it always been like this?

34 pointsmrhands55623 comments

I wasn’t necessarily expecting every piece in the magazine to be software dev content, but at least technology focused. I would guesstimate 90% of the magazine is now activism focused and if they can find a loose tie to technology it’s even better.

Has wired always been like this?

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"Back in the day" the software development content magazine was Dr Dobbs.

Wired has always been long form journalism on tech life-style subjects. It's like The New Yorker or the Vice channel. It produces entertaining stories not technical tutorials.

It has never been about software development except tangentially via interviews with 'thought leaders.' It has never been Linux Journal or even Byte.

Try out "Communications of the ACM" for a much more engineering focused digest.

Here's some of the earliest Wired covers, from 1993: https://www.wired.com/story/wired-cover-browser-1993/

You'll see them feature: Bruce Sterling, a group of cypherpunks, Peter Gabriel, William Gibson, Alvin Toffler, and a SEGA game character. How closely do you think the magazine was focused on "dev content" back then?

I somehow ended up with a wired subscription for a year or maybe two in maybe 2007ish. I don't know that it was activism focused then, but it certainly wasn't software development focused.

More like breathless reporting on niche technology as if it will change the world... But it rarely did.

> More like breathless reporting on niche technology as if it will change the world... But it rarely did.

sounds exactly like TED.

Probably not a coincidence since the same guy created both.

This guy has a nice talk entitled What's wrong with TED talks": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5cKRmJaf0

The founder even responded to it, which means it hit a nerve.

2007 was an interesting year for tech, and whatever one thinks of Apple, most agree that the iphone was a leap forward.

However that doesn’t give enough content to fill 2 years of subscription.

It's never been purely dev content to my knowledge, or even focused on devs.

It's always been generally tech related though, and a quick look at their homepage shows that it still is.

Not saying they haven't changed at all. Not sure one way or the other. But, something to consider: maybe you've changed too.

Well I can only speak for the german version, but yes... I mean I would describe it as 'tech./big-bang-theory-nerd' lifestyle magazine with interviews interesting for 'I am the next startup millionaire' peeps who like apple gadgets (and without fun bbtn stuff like comics/shows etc) - well I guess it shines through I didn't like it much and never looked at it again after reading 3 issus. What surprises me is that you just subscribe to a magazine you didn't ever really read(?) and it comes off like one of this wired alt-right rents that complain that rage against the machine is suddenly political and should stop injecting their politics into anything Rofl...

No it wasn't always like it.

I used to subscribe to it from the early 2000's onwards and eventually cancelled my subscription about 5-6 years ago as it did become apparent how much of it was politically motivated or cosmopolitan nepotism amongst their tech friends.

I went through a phase of not reading them but taking them on holiday to read poolside and eventually had like 3 years worth to read and because I read them all within a short time frame I really noticed both the shift towards activism and also what utter nonsense they'd promote only for 2-3 years later the thing they'd promoted to disappear without a trace.

> I used to subscribe to it from the early 2000's onwards and eventually cancelled my subscription about 5-6 years ago as it did become apparent how much of it was politically motivated or cosmopolitan nepotism amongst their tech friends.

Most of the people I knew who subscribed or regularly read it in the first years has abandoned it by the early to mid-2000s for very similar reasons. I don't think it ever changed, I just think the pattern takes a while for most people to realize how completely dominant it is.

Used to be good - https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Now it's woke SJW trying to peacock.

Is there a magazine sub that’s worth getting in the tech space?

MIT Technology Review and Scientific American (more science than tech admittedly) are both very good imho. We have subs to both. Nuts and Volts honorary mention if you’re into hobbyist design /electronics/experimentation.

Good article from wired.

https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pu...

Magazines for tech? Will you get newpapers for dating too? If you like Linux maybe these?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=home

https://lwn.net/

Maybe a scientific journal or check out substack.

2600 was holding up until they went full social justice woke corona anti-Trump hating the past two years. Really sad to watch.

Yeah, I'm so tired of this trend. Vanity Fair has gone absolutely mad - the tone of some of their articles is wild: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/ivanka-trump-jared-k...

And it's not even that I'm pro-Trump. I'm not. I think he's a ridiculous buffoon. It's just that I'm British and I wish I could occasionally read about something other than bloody Trump, 24 hours a day, every day.

No, it hasn't.

No, it was not always like this. It became an anti-tech, anti-capitalist publication some time in the last 5-7 years. I'm not sure why, but something similar also happened at other magazines in the same time period, like Vogue, Rolling Stone, etc.

And they started using tiny type. I'm not interested in reading a portable paper magazine with my handy travel magnifying glass.

Yes. even when there was more tech, it wasn't technical. it was always activism and posthumanism foscused or whatnot

Thread with caution, tho. Yahoo Combinator itself is just as woke as lugenpresse quoted here and so just around 90% """activism""" too. No, not hacktivism even, just usual swamp.

Anecdote: for me, the most amazing discovery was a woke slogan found in... Gentleman's Quarterly.

that was perfect

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