Technology would be the rock and roll of the ’90s

May 2, 2016 9:57 PM

Step Behind the Scenes of the Frantic, Madcap Birth of Wired Magazine: “We’re trying to make a magazine that feels as if it has been mailed back from the future.”
posted by Drinky Die (13 comments total)

With 'being mailed back from the future' included hard to read fonts, font colors and combinations of background colors. That lessened greatly after running an interview with a legendary font designer. When asked about the look of Wired, he said something like the text seems like it's designed to piss off readers. Still, it was a great read in the early years.
posted by Homer42 at 12:15 AM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

Up until two moves ago, I had every issue of the first 5 years of Wired's run. It was astounding and fun and, yes, annoying, but annoying in a way that I found to be fun. I can't think of any other magazine that felt so much like an adventure with every new issue, except for maybe some very short-lived 'zines. It was even a tactile experience, with the paper for the magazine feeling unlike any other newsstand paper stock.

I lost interest sometime after year 5, probably had a subscription coming in to the house for a few years more, eventually didn't renew that. Or something. I haven't picked up a new copy of it in years.

But for a short while there, it was heady and exciting and it did, indeed, feel like something that came from the future.
posted by hippybear at 12:27 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

A coworker bought issue one on a work trip and made sure i got to see it (i was the young “hip” computer tech and publications person at our office). I was soon able to get Wired at the best bookstore in town, which had an excellent periodicals section, the sort of place that carried titles you’d never see at a supermarket / Fred Meyer.

When it came out I already had “high speed” Internet at work and dial-up access to the minicomputer as my gateway to the net at home, so i was primed for something better than the computer magazines of the early nineties. (Sorry, Mondo 2000, you didn’t make the grade.) For a year or two Wired was the obnoxiously-neon herald of the new era. The only other magazine i bought every issue of in those years was the Whole Earth Review.

I also lost interest by the mid/late nineties. I had the first four or five years until a move a decade ago, but kept a few of those early ones.
posted by D.C. at 1:57 AM on May 3, 2016

No mention of the actual phrase "Make these nerds feel like rock stars"? Also: NikNeg. Sigh.

So they turned their backs on the East Coast publishing elite - and the feud between Ziff-Davis and Wired ran deep for a while thereafter. For comparison, Bill Ziff's founding mantras for PC Magazine: "The highest density of facts per inch", "Boring, and proud of it" and "A cross between Elle and AutoCar".

(Nice to see 'there was a bullet hole in the office window when we moved in' - that same piece of founding mythos reoccurs elsewhere; it was said of the new Guardian offices in King's Cross, and of other places I've known. Perhaps it's always true.)
posted by Devonian at 2:06 AM on May 3, 2016

HERE COME THE ZIPPIES
posted by petebest at 5:13 AM on May 3, 2016

I thought that the mag was a lot of fun but then I noticed the odd trend of putting every overachiever/mountebank coughed up by the tech zeitgeist like a fur ball on the cover. "Mondo Fortune" would've been a better name.
posted by Chitownfats at 5:16 AM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

The only other magazine i bought every issue of in those years was the Whole Earth Review.

what, no Utne Reader?
posted by thelonius at 5:36 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

The '96 Wired office shot — less huge desktop monitors, maybe a little less paper, add small silvery Macs and pastel-on-black JS editors — is the model of today's sweatequitechshop. No privacy (panopticon … but for teh lulz!!!), all productivity (such as it is) on view.
posted by scruss at 6:58 AM on May 3, 2016

I thought that the mag was a lot of fun but then I noticed the odd trend of putting every overachiever/mountebank coughed up by the tech zeitgeist like a fur ball on the cover. "Mondo Fortune" would've been a better name.

Dow 100,000 by 2020!

I used to read every word up until about that timeframe, then I started losing interest. I'm glad I maintained a subscription through 2000, though, because a Wired mention is what brought me to mefi.
posted by gimli at 7:03 AM on May 3, 2016

I tried using my cuecat on this thread, but nothing happened.
posted by drezdn at 7:29 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

stopped reading when wireless took over...
posted by judson at 7:50 AM on May 3, 2016

Well, you could argue that prayer worked.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:17 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't forget the Long Boom. Boy, that would be a preferable reality.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:11 AM on May 9, 2016