Okay, I'll admit it, I am the median Internet user identified in last
December's Wired: College-educated white male, age 31, annual
income $40,000-$59,000. And yes, I read Wired.
Cover to cover.
Every month.
That matters, because in reading this article, you're letting me serve
as one level of information filter. Picking up this magazine was
another. As the Machine Age gives way to the Information Age, we
already have more information than time. We increasingly need
filters to keep us from being overwhelmed. Just how interested we
are in a magazine like Wired depends, in part, on our sense of this
looming electronic revolution.
One measure of the depth of change we might experience in the
future can be seen in the past. In the 50 years following Gutenberg's
invention of the printing press, the cost of copying or storing
written--or "coded"--information dropped one thousand-fold and it
became possible to copy for a penny what once cost ten dollars. The
scientific progress which this unleashed led to the Industrial Age of
factories, railroads and ultimately, some 400 years later, man landing
on the moon.
By contrast, in just the 25 years since the invention of the
microprocessor, the cost of copying or storing coded information has
dropped ten million-fold and we can now copy for a penny what
once cost $100,000. If a technological innovation four-orders of
magnitude more powerful than the one which led to the Industrial
Revolution overwhelms you, confuses you, excites you or all of the
above, you're not alone. Wired, more than anything, is a magazine for
those who grasp the depth and breadth of change the Information
Age brings. They "get it."
But all is not tumult and uncertainty. They also realize that
information technology is inherently decentralizing. Hierarchical
relationships--boss to employee, network news to TV viewer--are
being replaced by webs of ever-cheaper, point-to-point, direct
contacts. The Orwellian world of the central records mainframe never
arrived. Instead, we see a rapidly evolving information ecosystem of
personal computers, fax machines, Internet nodes, cellular phones
and more. The centralized icons of the past, IBM and the USSR to
name just two, have been reshaped or replaced.
For a magazine by, about and for the technologically-aware, the
results are twofold. First, like many of the Digital Generation, Wired
is a staunch defender of personal freedom, especially in cyberspace.
From apolitical technology flows this libertarianism, not the reverse.
Second, as available information explodes, information filters assume
greater importance. Wired serves this role explicitly in its chosen
niche, trying to provide "meaning and context" for "life at the cusp of
the new millennium" (Wired 1.1) An informal survey of The
Bionomics Institute's e-mail discussion list confirmed Wired 's
usefulness in examining, as one reader put it, "the BSU, or Biological
Software Unit."
Like many successful innovators before them, the niche identified by
the founders of Wired was not being served by any existing product.
To one side was "the latest PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration
of . . . ad sales cum parts catalog" (Wired 1.1) which characterized
existing technology publications. To the other lay the popular press.
In the popular press, no one seems bothered by the ubiquitous
phrase, "Information Superhighway." Trapped in a Machine Age
mindset, the mass media are content to drive their horseless
carriages down the familiar roads of yesterday. Cars and highways
are physical; information and, increasingly, value are virtual. A more
appropriate metaphor must be found. Non-traditional ways of
thinking must be given a tryout. Wired gives a marketplace to new
ideas, what one reader called "the bleeding edge," and has regular
lists of both jargon and hype to help keep track of the winners. It can
be chaotic and quick-changing. But so is the Information Age
environment.
Even today, as Internet use explodes into the mainstream, there's
distinct unease with anything as unplanned (and un-plannable) as
the evolving Infoweb. "This [information revolution] sounds
marvelous. But...there's a real question as to whether our current
social structures can accommodate such empowerment" begins
Newsweek in a recent cover story entitled "Techno Mania" Like
trying to tell the water where to go once the floodgates are opened,
this Luddite sentiment could never be translated into action.
It's time the mass media realizes microprocessors are more than just
the brains of our personal computers and the Information Age is
more than just e-mail. In many cars, a pinnacle of Machine Age
factory production, the value of the electronics has surpassed the
value of the steel. Look around. Change is everywhere. Wired
embraces change, even at the risk of relentless hipness.
Not surprising is a level of resistance, or even scorn, from those
whose lives and livelihoods are firmly enmeshed in the paradigm of
the Machine Age. The New Republic castigated Wired for, well, just
about everything, from "willful rootlessness and hyper-
individualism" to an "insider-outsider dichotomy" with a "taint of
contempt for the poor." (January 9&16, 1995, p.21) Cyberspace is not
amenable to central planning and the social engineering crowd is
beginning to realize this.
Wall Street Journal editor John Fund put it this way: "The
Conventional-wisdom media hates Wired for a very good reason. It
openly states that much of the Old Media will wind up on the scrap
heap of history and that free-markets, and not Al Gore's info
superhighway with guard rails, will dominate the future. Wired is a
painful reminder that their worst nightmare just might someday
come true: they will become culturally redundant."
There is, of course, a contradiction to the media messenger of the
future arriving in the medium of the past. Wired acknowledges this
in ways both loud and subtle, from its love-it-or-hate-it graphic
style, to publishing the e-mail addresses of its authors. And, with the
launching of HotWired last year, Wired 's owners established a
virtual gathering place on the Internet.
For today, Wired remains the lifestyle magazine of choice for
Information Age cognoscenti. Perhaps they're tired of reading about
the "information superhighway." Perhaps they want more than the
Luddite undertones of so much coverage of information technology in
the popular press. Perhaps they are comfortable with the complexity
of evolving, bionomic systems. And maybe, just maybe, they find
that Wired is the best available filter for information on how
technology will reshape our society and our lives.
Besides, it's cool.
Steve Gibson is executive director of The Bionomics Institute in San Francisco. He may be reached at [email protected]
� 1995 Educom.