
Before Wired, There Was the Eccentric “Mondo 2000” - MilnerRoute
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/tech-time-warp-week-wired-eccentric-mondo-2000/
======
csixty4
There was a discussion about Mondo 2000 here on HN maybe a year ago, and I
remember someone commenting that they & all their friends growing up in
California saw Mondo as a huge joke. Their parents and older friends were all
working with VR and the Internet and it was nothing like Mondo made it out to
be. They couldn't believe anybody took it seriously.

One of the replies really resonated with me. Growing up in the midwest in the
mid-90s, where scarcely anyone had heard of the Internet, Mondo was paradise.
It portrayed a humanistic, technophilic world of sex, drugs, and high
technology so far away from the humble, conservative "Breadbasket of North
America" around us.

I have a full run of Mondo 2000 I intend to scan someday. Flipping through
those back issues, it really does feel silly today. But back then, each of
those issues symbolized hope for me. I kept a stack next to my bed for
inspiration. I would dream about the future I was about to create.

Looking back, that's why I was so disappointed with college the first time
around. I spent the last couple years of high school drooling over virtual
reality rigs and cyberspace, only to have a required COBOL class my freshman
year. I dreamed of dropping out and moving to San Francisco where all the cool
people were, people who understood technology and the limitless future that
lies before us.

Timothy Leary was my hero, and I wept the day he died. I tried reading Chaos
and Cyberculture[1] again a couple years ago and it felt like barely-coherent
word vomit. But in 1994 it blew my mind.

I worry that this will be the legacy of Mondo 2000 and its ilk. Taken out of
context, I'd say it's 90% "weird for the sake of weird" crap. Although I must
say that it's beautifully illustrated crap, pushing the limits of 1990s
hardware and software. And that's the thing - so much of Mondo's value is in
its context. The team behind Mondo were cyberspace missionaries spinning tales
of a digital utopia, inspiring us to realize it. When the mainstream went
grunge, they went digital. I feel like my passion for open source today
springs from that same dream of a global kumbaya we were promised decades ago.

[1] [https://drytoasts.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/timothy-
leary-...](https://drytoasts.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/timothy-leary-chaos-
cyber-culture.pdf)

~~~
klint
I think a lot of people miss that it was in in part _literally_ a joke. It
seems a lot people look at that "R.U. a cyberpunk" bit and think that it was
meant to be serious. Hell, it was all right there in the editor-in-chief's
name.

But of course it was also more than just a joke. Have you read "The Guy I
Almost Was," mentioned in another comment here? I asked R.U. Sirius about that
when I interviewed him in 2002 [1] and he said:

"I say that all the time in public interviews, 'We made it all up.' Which in a
sense is true — some of it we made up and some of it we didn’t. Mondo 2000
clearly wasn’t journalism in the conventional sense. It was mostly composed of
interviews, very subjective, really dedicated to people speaking in their own
voice. It was very playful and very surrealistic. I never really wanted to do
journalism — I do now because I have to to make a living. And we do it at
Thresher, I guess because it’s become a habit now. To say we made it all up is
kind of flippant, but we weren’t concerned with responsibility or credibility.
We were more concerned with creating a sense of excitement and energy and a
sense of belonging to the next wave of culture. And we were concerned with
making people laugh."

~~~
mistermann
This sounds quite similar to Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo Journalism:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism)

~~~
gonzo
There was a lot of that. I was one of the people behind Fringeware, well-
acquainted with the Mondo crew.

I named my son Hunter Speed Thompson.

------
teddyh
These magazines always brings _The Guy I Almost Was_ ¹ to my mind (previously
discussed on HN in 2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740760))

①
[http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/](http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Ha, yes. Always comes up in my head too.

But the best Electric Sheep comic was Delta Thrives. I look at it several
times a year still. Gorgeous stuff.

[http://e-sheep.sansara.net.ua/www.e-sheep.com/delta/heartoft...](http://e-sheep.sansara.net.ua/www.e-sheep.com/delta/heartofthesun/index.html)

~~~
api
I remember Electric Sheep too... So much better than badly drawn sneering
blobs and stick figures expressing smug superiority or banal cynicism. Man did
Internet culture ever turn to trash after ~2001.

90s Internet culture: what you posted.

Today's Internet culture: LOL I p00ped today! Because science!

It's really just a mirror of the larger culture though. I watched some old
Star Trek TNG a while back and was just amazed. You could never even write
anything that optimistic today.

History says these things are cyclic. Hope that's still true. Probably is. The
20s will probably be pretty awesome.

~~~
egypturnash
There's still good stuff out there in corners of the internet. And there was a
lot of garbage on the net back in the 90s, too. There's just so much more good
stuff AND garbage on the net now. Because almost everyone is on it, no matter
how rich or poor, no matter how much or little free time they have to craft
art.

For instance - since we are talking about one of the pioneers of webcomics -
there s now a huge flourishing world of people doing comics on the web. One
that's big enough and noticeable enough that people can find an audience to
make a modest living self-publishing, with a pretty fuzzy border between it
and the world of people who do work for "real" publishers. If anything it's
getting easier and easier to make a living on this stuff with things like
Patreon and Kickstarter.

It's just that yeah, we also have stuff like XKCD or the Oatmeal or Zen
Moments that is honed to a razor-sharp edge of "something cute you want to re-
share".

~~~
api
I guess it's like music. There's engineered pop that's designed for catchiness
but otherwise is pretty crummy, but if you dig you can find good stuff.

I feel the two are to some extent mutually exclusive. Some of the parent
cartoons are amazing but they're also _weird_. They're "heavy." I might not
post those to my Facebook feed. My in-laws are on there.

------
gdubs
Does anyone remember the beautiful cover stock used by Wired in the mid-
nineties? That was a fantastic era for the magazine. Their online portal Hot
Wired was ahead of its time. It's design lead Jeff Veen went on to found
TypeKit. I had a subscription during that time and would excitedly check the
mail every day. Before that, I'd trek to the local college to flip through
their copies.

~~~
cpeterso
Hot Wired is also credited with inventing the banner ad.

------
liquidcool
Man, this brings back memories of lying on my loft in college, listening to
industrial music while reading William Gibson. Studying CS, playing with 3D on
the Amiga, reading 2600, Wired, Mondo, etc., etc. It doesn't matter if it was
tongue in cheek or half joking, for some of us, it was describing the world
you wanted to live in, or hoped was the future since Max freaking Headroom :-)
It was fun!

------
brianstorms
And before Mondo 2000 there was ELECTRIC WORD [1], edited by WIRED's founder
Louis Rossetto. How many of you remember _that_?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Word)

~~~
klint
I've been trying to track down copies or PDFs of Electric word and Language
Technology to no avail. I'm really curious what the design and contents were
actually like. Best I've found are some scans of the covers and a little info
on a few issues:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080819193753/http://www.rynne....](https://web.archive.org/web/20080819193753/http://www.rynne.org/electricword)

------
bobbyi_settv
I'd recommend "Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge" which is a
compilation of articles from the magazine about drugs, technology, music and
other topics:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mondo-2000-Aphrodisiacs-Artificial-
Tec...](http://www.amazon.com/Mondo-2000-Aphrodisiacs-Artificial-Techno-
Erotic/dp/0060969288)

~~~
gotofritz
Yes, great stuff, everyone was so idealistic (and naive...) before Facebook
and the NSA. Apparently Google wasn't even going to be evil.

~~~
csixty4
Not really. We rallied pretty hard against the Clipper Chip. John Perry Barlow
ran in those circles (he interviewed Ted Nelson for one Mondo issue) and the
EFF was a big presence in the hacker culture.

I'll admit we _were_ naive about Google, though. But at the time, they were a
couple college students taking on "big business". In a way, they were re-
democratizing the Internet, and that was a good thing. "Don't be evil" was
exactly the kind of message we expected to hear from an Internet company.

~~~
klint
Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call MONDO 100% naive. There was a lot of
paranoia about government surveillance and the misuse of technology in its
pages as well.

~~~
bobbyi_settv
I agree that naive isn't quite the right word. A lot of the attitude and world
view have their roots in the 60s counter culture and hacker / raver culture
which combine huge optimism in human potential with a deep distrust of
authority.

------
waterlesscloud
Mondo. Boing Boing as a zine. Fringeware Review. I used to have all of 'em.
Wish I'd kept them, but at least I absorbed them.

All I have left from the late 80s - early 90s are 2600s. Small enough to keep
around.

~~~
brandonmenc
A few years ago I emailed Mark Frauenfelder about where to find Boing Boing
back issues, and he told me they were planning on releasing them all as an iOS
app.

Sadly, it hasn't happened.

~~~
beschizza
Still on the cards.

------
sireat
After devouring Mondo 2000 in early 90s the early issues of Wired seemed sort
of meh despite similar optimism.

When you were reading Mondo 2000, it seemed you were on the verge of
participating in something great, the world was going to change (all hail
Gibson) and you knew it better than those boring over the hill 30 year olds in
suits.

I suppose it was the same feeling that teeenagers got from reading some punk
zines of late 70s.

------
Sideloader
I had a fairly extensive collection of M2000 issues inherited from my older
brother. Also had a copy of the 'Mondo 2000 User's Guide' book. All were
stolen during a house party in 2010 that went limbic :-(

------
jwatte
Mondo was probably the biggest typographic/layout stylistic influence for me.
In that regard it was awesome !

------
brandonmenc
probably the best article ever written about mondo:

[http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/ego/literary_genius/mondo2k.ht...](http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/ego/literary_genius/mondo2k.html)

