Originally published 29 October 2002
Wired magazine is about to have its 10th birthday. Flashy, brassy, Day-Glo graphics. The holy scriptures of technofreaks, ubergeeks, and dot-com digerati.
If you are not aware of Wired magazine, you haven’t…
I was going to say, you haven’t missed anything, but, in fact, you may have missed everything. Wired is where the next big thing makes its hyperhot debut. Wired is where the breathless future parades in all its glitzy glory.
Let me fill you in on the November [2002] issue.
A two-page spread of graphs confirms what you already guessed: Digital has decisively triumphed over analog. Digital phones, music players, and video players have left analog devices in the dust. Digital cameras and camcorders are about to overtake in sales their analog competition.
Celluloid still reigns in the movie theaters, and analog television will hang on for a few more years, but these are the last-ditch stands of a decrepit information technology that started when our Cro-Magnon ancestors made the first analog scratches on the walls of caves.
Analog is so — so last millennium.
Get used to it; the future is written in 1s and 0s.
In no other magazine that I know of is the distinction between advertising and content as blurry as in Wired. And that, my friends, is the face of the digital future: Consumption is life, life is consumption.
Read the ads in Wired to find out what’s rad, or read the articles; it’s all the same. If you’re reading last month’s issue, you’re hopelessly passé…
The current issue of Wired has articles on the latest technology in genetics, robotics, astronomy, and suitcase nukes. But there’s more, much more.
Without reading Wired, for instance, I never would have known about a now phenomenon called stage-phoning — pretending to talk on a cell phone to impress bystanders. Apparently it’s de rigueur to have a phone at your ear, even if you have no one to talk to.
And while you’re at it, if your cell phone doesn’t play video games, you are way, way behind the curve. Get with it.
If you want to see just how far behind the curve you are, check out the article on the homes of hi-tech execs. Roger Sherman, former CEO of Tiger Electronics, has $1 million worth of computerized gizmos in his 17,000-square-foot Florida home, including an electronically controlled waterfall.
Lyor Cohen, the CEO of Island Def Jam Music Group, is wiring his mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He says: “My wife and I just got crazier and crazier and crazier about the electronics. I made the decision that I wasn’t going to be left behind, and that I wasn’t going to be afraid of having a lot of stuff.”
That’s the spirit, Lyor.
If you are looking for a partner to go with your house full of stuff, online personals are hot, hot, hot, according to Wired, so get thee to the Internet. Online personals are “now generating the kind of growth metrics witnessed at the height of the dot-com frenzy,” says a Wired guru. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds like fun.
Tens of millions of singles are currently fishing for partners online. The advantage of online personals is the essentially limitless space you have to make your pitch — digitally-enhanced photographs included.
Another advantage: You can hook up with your ideal mate by using a Boolean search. If you don’t know what a Boolean search is, perhaps you should stick to the local bar scene or newspaper adverts.
While on the subject of the sexes, you will want to know, as Wired reports, that computer-game programmers have finally figured out how to accurately render female breasts. No more stacked but static Lara Crofts; the newest electronic game heroines jiggle and bounce as they blast aliens with laser guns or play beach volleyball.
These breakthrough bosoms bring civilization one step closer to the holy grail of game programmers — a pixilated vixen more voluptuously real than the real thing.
Of course, it’s mostly teenage boys who adopt the on-screen personas of these newly pneumatic cyberchicks. Wired asked 16-year-old gamester Kirby Smith if he was embarrassed adopting a girl’s identity on-screen. He replied: “I don’t think [gender’s] an issue. It’s about whoever deals out the most damage.”
Why does reading Wired each month make me feel so — so, out of it? I don’t even have a cell phone, much less one that lets me play volleyball with bouncy bikini babes, or search the World Wide Web for love.
A final observation: I e‑mailed this column to my computer-jock son before I gave it to my editor. He responded: “I’d hate to break it to you, Pop, but nobody who is wired reads Wired. The magazine publication cycle is too slow for the bleeding-edge ubergeek. If you really want to know what’s going on, you’ll have to go online.”
I’m not just behind the curve. I can’t even find the curve.
