Writing
Friday 14 March 2003
Happy birthday Wired
Wired is ten years old. Gary Wolf writes about what things were like ten years ago. But nothing in the article resonates with me. Is it because I was in the UK? (Although 1993 was, coincidentally, the year I first visited the US and San Francisco.) Or because I didn’t really get into Wired-type stuff for at least another six months? Or because I didn’t discover the magazine for another 11 months? I don’t know, but Wolf doesn’t make me think “wow, was that only ten years ago!?” or “wow, I’d forgotten things were like that!”
But whatever, despite that, despite everything, happy birthday Wired. Because in a number of ways you changed my life.
Comments
I think it's mainly because Wired wasn't 'Wired' (the quintessence of Wired-ness) ten years ago. And Wired pre-Hotwired (and pre-web), I think, was quite an odd thing indeed: all dressed up, nowhere to go.
I still haven't got into Wired, browsing through it in newsagents, it always seemed to contain more glossy adverts than anything else.
Nothing dates faster than a mobile phone, remember the one used by Richard Gere in Pretty Woman (1990).
We had support contracts for all our PC's in 1991, we were told that 15% of the value of the PC's was a reasonable level to pay. What a joke.
In 1992 we bought a state of the art Compaq 486 with an unprecedented 16 meg of RAM, the whole kit'n cubblodle cost 10,000 uk pounds. 2 years ago I threw it away, it was still working perfectly and weighed half a ton.
1993 I spent 3 days trying to load SCO UNIX on aforesaid machine by floppy disks, they were strange times.
1994 I got my first Internet Connection with Demon.
1995 Loaded my first browser, Launched our first web site.
Leaving the nerdy techno stuff. If one were to ask during which decade did the greatest cultural changes occur, 63-73, 73-83, 83-93,93-03? I would have to say it was the first period. But you may disagree.
Richard
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