Every so often a magazine comes along that captures the essence of a change in society. Through visual and literary excellence, it acts as the print window that illuminates the whole panorama of that shift. The premier issue of Wired, published out of California and available on newsstands since February, promises to be just such a magazine for this on-line generation.
Beautifully designed, illustrated and printed, Wired contains things too often missing from magazines about technology: intelligence; good research; and perscient, well-crafted articles. Its five-page opening introduction, itself an outstanding example of an modern integrated electronic text-and-illustration, lovingly quotes from Marshall McLuhan's 1967 The Medium Is The Message:
"The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology - is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re- evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted.
"Everything is changing...you, your education, your family, your neighbourhood, your job, your government, your relation to others. And they're changing dramatically."
This also must be editor/publisher Louis Rossetto's credo as he aims his magazine on the Digital Generation, whom he describes as "the most powerful people on the planet today." Does he mean us, folks? Wired's mission is to "look for the soul of our new society." The computer press, writes Rossetto, is too busy churning out "the latest PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration of its sales formula cum parts catalog to discuss the meaning or context of social changes so profound that their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire."
Heavy stuff -- even if it were true. But Rosetto's hype (and his obliteration of the importance of the 19th century Industrial Revolution) will be forgiven by the many on-line junkies who will no doubt seize on Wired as the one true guide and beacon in our apparent transformation to an information-based society.
As a guide and beacon, Wired doesn't do too bad a job at all. The 112 pages of the premier issue are high on information content. Perhaps the writers are, too, (they all have an Internet address listed.) But their works comes across as intellectual guided missiles, each aimed at a moving target. Like the real prototypes, in this first issue of Wired some hit, some miss, and some misfire -- but only slightly.
Bruce Sterling's outstanding "War Is Virtual Hell" paints an astounding picture of how the U.S. military has swiftly adapted virtual reality for training and in-battle display. Sterling describes how American tanks, their crews trained by months of pre-battle experience in multi-million dollar simulators that exactly reproduced the terrain of the southern desert, were able mercillessly to slaughter Iraqi tanks whose crews, lacking infra-red targeting, drove around blindly in a sandstorm. Because satellite imagery was able to model their virtual training landscape, when it came time for battle the Americans were more familiar with their Iraqi desert that were the Iraqis themselves.
Military brass now can watch the Battle of 73 Easting in full-screen multimedia glory. The situation has been reproduced move by precision move, cyberdeath by bloodless cyberdeath, away from the stench of the real thing. But virtual war does not come cheaply. Megabucks are being poured into computerised visioning and Sterling coins the phrase "cyberpork" to describe the rain of money that greets companies when virtual reality projects are floated towards the Pentagon.
From digitization of the national libraries of France, Britain and the Library of Congress; through Japanese Otaku zombie computer nerds; phone phreaks into reprogramming cellulars; an attack on conventional education in favour of free choice microvouchers; through an expos of the U.S. Department of Justice's rip-off of PROMIS software and its sale as an intelligence data-gathering system to Israel while the government bankrupted the company that wrote it; to Whole Earth Stewart Brand's interview of the new intellectual darling, Camille Paglia (Camille Who?) -- Wired covers a globally interconnected field and asks piercing questions.
It's the kind of magazine that you can't read at one sitting (although no doubt somebody will prove me wrong). The articles are too thought-provoking; the illustrations too beautiful; the short sections too interwoven and filled with tiny pictures to make out what connects where (well, nothing is perfect); to made this magazine a one-shot read to be thumbed through and cast aside.
It's going onto my bookshelf, to be looked at and re-read later. The world's gone electric and you too can look through a glorious window that may help you think. Get Wired -- and stay wired.
