
On Reading Issues of Wired from 1993 to 1995 (2016) - prismatic
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/on-reading-issues-of-wired-from-1993-to-1995
======
beat
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.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
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.

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

------
jshaqaw
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

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Darkphibre
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. :)

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

~~~
Darkphibre
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.

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joezydeco
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.

~~~
rahuldottech
I think Jason Scott might be able to help:
[https://twitter.com/textfiles](https://twitter.com/textfiles)

~~~
joezydeco
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.

~~~
cr0sh
Hopefully they'll do a better job scanning them, when they do, than whatever
happened with Omni magazine - that scan was completely butchered.

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Causality1
>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.

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tpmx
Some random scans from 1994 and onwards:

[https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=wired+19...](https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?and%5B%5D=wired+1994)

~~~
ubertakter
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...

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gdubs
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...](https://www.amazon.com/Hotwired-Style-Principles-Building-
Smart/dp/1888869097)

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

[https://www.wired.com/1994/12/hacker-4/](https://www.wired.com/1994/12/hacker-4/)

~~~
schoen
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/](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).

~~~
vageli
> 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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Selective_availability)

