
On Reading Issues of Wired from 1993 to 1995 - kawera
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/on-reading-issues-of-wired-from-1993-to-1995?currentPage=all
======
zeveb
> In “Scenarios,” a special edition from 1995, the guest editor Douglas
> Coupland took it upon himself to compile a “reverse time capsule,” which he
> deemed “not a capsule directed to the future, but rather to the citizens of
> 1975.” What artifacts, he asked, “might surprise them most about the
> direction taken by the next 20 years?” Included in the capsule—alongside
> non-tech items such as a chunk of the Berlin Wall, Prozac, and a Japanese
> luxury sedan—were a laptop (“more power in your lap than MIT’s biggest
> mainframe”), an Apple MessagePad (“hand-held devices are replacing
> secretaries”), and a cellular phone. Scanning my apartment, I can spot
> progeny of all three. One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse
> time capsule today and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not
> be all that surprised by the direction we’ve taken.

I remember 1995 pretty well; I think 2016 has a lot more in common with it
than 1995 has in common with 1974. Honestly, I don't think life has changed
all that much in the last twenty years. Sure, everyone has a smartphone, and
back then almost no-one had a _cell_phone, and the Internet is faster, and
computers can do more and are more reliable, but things really aren't
fundamentally different.

We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than, and
we have them now. We listened to music then, and we listen to it now.
Computers have been integrated far better into our lives, but they're doing
essentially the same things (I still remember watching a QuickTime video of
The Spirit of Christmas back in 1996; that's no different in kind than Hulu or
Netflix, just in degree).

~~~
dragonwriter
> > One suspects that, were we to engineer our own reverse time capsule today
> and ship it back to the citizens of 1995, they might not be all that
> surprised by the direction we’ve taken.

Well, yeah, though I think the changes wrought on the average persons way of
life from 1995 to 2016 were in some ways greater than 1974 to 1995, the things
that have changed the most aren't so much the kind of bits of kit that would
go in a reverse time capsule. The ubiquity of digital communication is a huge
change, and the software and services that the average person regularly
consumes based on them are -- but the bits of kit that we use to access them,
at least in outline, wouldn't be all that surprising in 1995.

> We had the Web then, and we have it now. We had internet communities than,
> and we have them now

For _vastly_ narrower definitions of "we" in 1995 than in 2016.

~~~
ghaff
And, perhaps especially in 1974, after they got over the shock of using an
iPhone or modern laptop to access the Internet, they'd be equally
flabbergasted to see that voice access to this "Star Trek computer" still
doesn't really work.

------
lafay
This article is by Anna Wiener, the same author who wrote the recent "Uncanny
Valley" piece:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565691)

Really enjoy her writing.

------
rconti
My favorite was Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth Mother Board", from December
1996, about the Fiber Optic Link around the Globe ("FLAG").

I wish I had all those issues I saved for a decade or so.

[http://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](http://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

~~~
Yhippa
I remember that thing being super long. Is it really worth going through the
whole thing?

~~~
Tossrock
If you like Neal Stephenson, yes. If you dislike Neal Stephenson, probably
not. If neither of the above, could go either way.

------
GnarfGnarf
Wired used to be a really interesting magazine. Now it's just a dumbed-down
catalog of high-tech gadgets. Like a SkyMall catalog.

~~~
nabla9
Wired was silly dumbed-down hype-catalog from the start.

It looks better in retrospect when we forget that we were dumb, young and
inexperienced when it came out. They had few good articles now and then just
like they have now, it depends on what kind of writers they have.

------
jedberg
> A few moments later, I was on eBay, where I started to bid on strangers’
> dusty collections of early issues of Wired, all from the years 1993 to 1995

It's interesting that the author never tried to get these from a library (or
at least doesn't mention it). Do libraries not keep back issues anymore?
Growing up in LA, I could get back issues of almost any magazine from the
library going many decades back. Sometimes my local library didn't have it,
but the LA system did.

Also, since she lives in SF, I'll bet should could just head over to Wired HQ
and ask to use their collection, and they'd probably be thrilled that someone
is interested in back issues. They have them all on a bookcase since the
beginning of time. I used to read them when taking breaks.

~~~
dagw
I'm sure most libraries have them in storage, but perhaps not handily
available and they quite possibly won't allow you to take them home. Honestly,
if they're easily available on Ebay, that's probably the best solution, if for
no other reason than that you'll get to read them in your favorite chair with
a glass of wine.

------
jpeg_hero
I was a subscriber since issue 1.

I loved that when some issues would arrive, they'd straight up smell like
spray paint.

I think it was something to do with the metallic paint.

------
gr3yh47
somebody from wired should do the same with the new yorker

------
robk
The excerpt of Microserfs they published was for me the epitome of 90s silicon
valley. Coupland hasn't impressed me since then but damn that was a perfect
time capsule

------
ogurechny
Let me remind you about the most hip programming language of today: PASCAL.
[https://archive.org/details/byte-
magazine-1978-08](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-08)

(There's a lot more there, don't accidentally drown.)

~~~
rbanffy
Meh... ;-)

[https://archive.org/details/byte-
magazine-1981-08](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08)

------
mccoyspace
And don't forget Mondo 2000. Earlier, more counter-culture and techo-utopian
(or maybe dystopian...)

------
muaddirac
> DataHand, a two-thousand-dollar sensor-laden, ergonomic “keyboard without
> keys.”

Not as defunct as you might think! See:
[https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0)

------
rbanffy
Wired is for newbies. For a real trip one should try OMNI and Creative
Computing.

~~~
fao_
My parents have a small collection of OMNI they had kept over the years. I've
always meant to read through them but forgot when I had the time. Thank you
for reminding me.

~~~
rbanffy
My mom had a Fortune subscription for most of my childhood. Both stories and
ads provided a surprising perspective of the computer revolution as seen from
the management side.

------
olivermarks
I loved 'Uncanny Valley' by Weiner. Wired is one dimension of the mid 90's,
Morph's Outpost was another, less corporate one. More Kai's power tools than
Adobe....
[https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2800394161_32c40ecc6c.j...](https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3211/2800394161_32c40ecc6c.jpg)

------
kevin_thibedeau
Ah yes the era of light pink text on a striped yellow background. The future
was going to be just like Max Headroom.

------
ovt
I don't have deep knowledge of what it's like in literary land, literature
degree programs, etc., but oh goodness can they blather on, Painting Pictures
longer than my interest holds.

"on MUNI, at bars, in bed in my apartment in Haight-Ashbury" sounds like
someone who came from somewhere regarded as lame and is hoping that coolness
is now on them.

"it’s a document of a time when consumer technology was still clumsy and
undefined" \-- I'm not sure consumer technology has reached its pinnacle of
perfection.

And that's as far as I got. I'd actually been hoping we were going to hear
something like "Here is the nonsense of 1994, which lets us think more clearly
about what's probably nonsense in 2016", and maybe it's in there somewhere,
buried.

------
codeulike
On a similar note, things found in a 1995 copy of '.Net - The Internet
Magazine'

[http://www.codeulike.com/2008_01_01_archive.html](http://www.codeulike.com/2008_01_01_archive.html)

------
CobrastanJorji
> A sidebar on Wacom’s ArtPad, from 1995—“If you’ve ever sketched with a
> pencil, you’ll be able to use ArtPad”—made me wonder why it took Apple so
> long to roll out its Pencil stylus for the iPad.

Because in 1995, the handwriting recognition of the Apple Newton was so bad
that it was a Simpsons joke.

~~~
ScottBurson
I don't think the author is talking about the Newton. I think she's pointing
out that the iPad was out for years before Apple released a stylus for it.

\-- Which I think was because His Steveness hated styli. I guess this was
because, back in the days of the Palm PDAs, people tended to lose them --
though I never had this problem.

------
nevster
The spines make for interesting patterns:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/UZdhB/?taken-
by=nevrs](https://www.instagram.com/p/UZdhB/?taken-by=nevrs)

(I have every single issue).

------
Arzh
An alternate take on the history from people who lived through it
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaDdLhnIoA4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaDdLhnIoA4)

------
patrickg_zill
The "original" Wired was written by people well outside mainstream journalism.
It was OK for a news piece to be quirky or obscure. When it was taken over by
"Encorpera" it changed greatly.

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notmything
What on earth am I reading?

    
    
      One thing I’ve noticed since moving to San Francisco is that my cohort 
      in the tech world doesn’t talk that much about the industry’s past.
    

How is the above different in any other industry? I don't hear my fellow
consultants talking about the history of consulting, I don't hear my programme
manager wife and her programme manager friends talking about the history of
programme management etc.

Waffle

------
ChrisArchitect
doh
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856835)

