And by that I don’t mean “shit” but “the shit”…
I remember in the late 90’s I was thinking about a career in technology and I would read WIRED religiously. It seemed to have the pulse on everything. It WAS the pulse, it seemed…
Was it? Is it?
My personal impression was that WIRED was so full of itself in the late 1990’s that it was only readable to acolytes. Then the dot.com bust occurred and they started scrambling. Now it lots of Look! Bright, Shiny! but the predictions that Everything Would Change have been dialed back.
It’s not meaningful except for gadget freaks and the blighted few who get none of their information about social and technological trends from anywhere else.
Obviously, I’m a pretty jaundiced source. And I have the disadvantage of knowing some of the people who write for it.
I dunno-I still read it semi-regularly when an article or two catches my eye. I remember getting a snarky comment from someone (sales clerk?) about 2 years ago when I was buying an issue-something along the lines of “Wow so somebody still reads that!” :shrug:
I only glanced at Wired back in the 90s (as Exapno said, there were too many “This. Will. Change. Everything.” articles). Bu tI pick an issue every now and again today and I really enjoy it. It seems to distill all the best parts of the various tech blogs into a readable format.
I love gadgets and technology, but reading about them online is tiring. Wired works for me.
But I’m also really liking Geek Monthly. Slightly less gadgety than Wired, but still entertaining.
When was WIRED ever the shit?
I remember the few people who thought it was the shit growing out of it some 8 years back or so.
Of course there may be a new crowd of people more into hype than substance who haven’t yet had a chance to grow up yet. Maybe after they’ve had a computer for a few years and worked at a job or something.
Yea, maybe it never was. It seemed like it to me at the time. I was young and it was fully of flashy colors and seemed so smart.
I did stop buying it a long time ago, maybe I knew something then?
We have a subscription and I enjoy reading it. Although like with most print media, we can find most of the info online. Example: They featured Tim Kring, the maker of “Heroes” in an article. I was quite excited, but turns out, I had already read the article online.
I still enjoy it. That and my Skeptic subscriptions are my two favorites.
I feel pretty much the same way; technoporn for geeks. Scientific American, which I used to read in high school, also seems to have gone about the same way. And now that my company no longer carries a corporate membership to the Milliken Library, I’m not able to readily puruse actual science journals, so I’m in pain.
Stranger
I subscribe to Wired. It’s the only thing I subscribe to, actually. They are wa-a-ay in to bio tech and military tech right now, which kind of bores me. But, every so often something will come along in real life and I think “hey I read about that in Wired a while back” and I think that’s kind of neat.
I think the reason I like it is because I’m not really in to politics or religion or anything else that people like to sit and discuss, but I am always interested in learning about/discussion technology and Wired sort of gives me a good overview of “things I could possibly talk about with other people that won’t bore me.”
I actually really like the ads in that magazine. heh.
Since my local library had nothing like it, and is hopeless mired in the wrong century, I bought them a subscription. Now they’re Wired. I hope someone reads it besides me.
I pick it up now and then, much as I did during a recent trip to the airport, when I discovered they had a nude Jenna Fischer (aka Pam, from The Office) on the cover! So I’m sort of a fan now.
You mean sex sells magazines? :eek: 
Well, I spend all day online, but have definite, particular periods where the only access to anything I have is mags, and WIRED seems pretty relevent and timely considering. Tell me what I SHOULD be subscribing to instead or addtion to, you toppers. Got Wired yesterday for 2yrs for $20.00.
The? No.
At least several times I looked it it was nigh unreadable. Hot pink text on a green background all over the page. Don’t know if its still the case anymore.
Brian
I bought an issue of “Wired” once because I’d heard good things about it. Then I tried to read it and found out that it was virtually impossible to tell the difference between an article and an advertisement without studying things very closely. Far more style than substance, just like Maxim. (Unless the one Maxim I’ve read was an outlier.)
Currently I subscribe to GAMES, Skeptical Inquirer, and Skeptic. I used to subscribe to The Economist, but never had time to really read it.
I had a gift subscription for a year in the late '90s and liked it well enough. Entertaining and inside-baseball-y, but mostly worthwhile. Lots of stuff on The Next Big Thing in computers, only a tiny fraction of which has come true. Ironically, I’ll bet the increasing dominance of online journalism and blogging has hurt it. I think its best days are probably behind it.
No, they’ve toned that down quite a bit.
Like someone said above, they are really full of themselves. They buy into that techie yuppie San Fran thing, which really alienates me. They are pretty fad-ish too - their articles on the Wii vs. PS3 were laughable. I still buy the thing every month (hey, it matches The Enquirer for bathroom reading material) but more for the product reviews and tiny page-long articles instead of the headlining ones.
I subscribe to it. It makes ok toilet reading if you don’t take it too too seriously. For a non-gadget guy like me, it is a good way to keep somewhat current on what’s out there.
And yes, the whole military and biotech bias is getting a bit on my nerves. I hope it lasts as little as their Hollywood obsession from last year.