Subbed to wired magazine for the past year. Has it always been like this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29446294

by mrhands556 • 5 years ago

34 23 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I wasn’t necessarily expecting every piece in the magazine to be software dev content, but at least technology focused. I would guesstimate 90% of the magazine is now activism focused and if they can find a loose tie to technology it’s even better.

Has wired always been like this?

togaen• 5 years ago

No, it hasn't.

late2part• 5 years ago

Used to be good - https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Now it's woke SJW trying to peacock.

mrhands556• 5 years ago

Is there a magazine sub that’s worth getting in the tech space?

toomuchtodo• 5 years ago

MIT Technology Review and Scientific American (more science than tech admittedly) are both very good imho. We have subs to both. Nuts and Volts honorary mention if you’re into hobbyist design /electronics/experimentation.

GhettoComputers• 5 years ago

Good article from wired.

https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-science-of-ultra-pu...

Magazines for tech? Will you get newpapers for dating too? If you like Linux maybe these?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=home

https://lwn.net/

Maybe a scientific journal or check out substack.

landemva2• 5 years ago

2600 was holding up until they went full social justice woke corona anti-Trump hating the past two years. Really sad to watch.

unclebucknasty• 5 years ago

It's never been purely dev content to my knowledge, or even focused on devs.

It's always been generally tech related though, and a quick look at their homepage shows that it still is.

Not saying they haven't changed at all. Not sure one way or the other. But, something to consider: maybe you've changed too.

ehutch79• 5 years ago

Yes. even when there was more tech, it wasn't technical. it was always activism and posthumanism foscused or whatnot

brudgers• 5 years ago

"Back in the day" the software development content magazine was Dr Dobbs.

Wired has always been long form journalism on tech life-style subjects. It's like The New Yorker or the Vice channel. It produces entertaining stories not technical tutorials.

It has never been about software development except tangentially via interviews with 'thought leaders.' It has never been Linux Journal or even Byte.

taurath• 5 years ago

Try out "Communications of the ACM" for a much more engineering focused digest.

toast0• 5 years ago

I somehow ended up with a wired subscription for a year or maybe two in maybe 2007ish. I don't know that it was activism focused then, but it certainly wasn't software development focused.

More like breathless reporting on niche technology as if it will change the world... But it rarely did.

ekianjo• 5 years ago

More like breathless reporting on niche technology as if it will change the world... But it rarely did.

sounds exactly like TED.

Probably not a coincidence since the same guy created both.

bellyfullofbac• 5 years ago

This guy has a nice talk entitled What's wrong with TED talks": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5cKRmJaf0

The founder even responded to it, which means it hit a nerve.

lostlogin• 5 years ago

2007 was an interesting year for tech, and whatever one thinks of Apple, most agree that the iphone was a leap forward.

However that doesn’t give enough content to fill 2 years of subscription.

microtherion• 5 years ago

Here's some of the earliest Wired covers, from 1993: https://www.wired.com/story/wired-cover-browser-1993/

You'll see them feature: Bruce Sterling, a group of cypherpunks, Peter Gabriel, William Gibson, Alvin Toffler, and a SEGA game character. How closely do you think the magazine was focused on "dev content" back then?

ageek123• 5 years ago

No, it was not always like this. It became an anti-tech, anti-capitalist publication some time in the last 5-7 years. I'm not sure why, but something similar also happened at other magazines in the same time period, like Vogue, Rolling Stone, etc.

landemva2• 5 years ago

And they started using tiny type. I'm not interested in reading a portable paper magazine with my handy travel magnifying glass.

abagheri43• 5 years ago

that was perfect

richliss• 5 years ago

No it wasn't always like it.

I used to subscribe to it from the early 2000's onwards and eventually cancelled my subscription about 5-6 years ago as it did become apparent how much of it was politically motivated or cosmopolitan nepotism amongst their tech friends.

I went through a phase of not reading them but taking them on holiday to read poolside and eventually had like 3 years worth to read and because I read them all within a short time frame I really noticed both the shift towards activism and also what utter nonsense they'd promote only for 2-3 years later the thing they'd promoted to disappear without a trace.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

I used to subscribe to it from the early 2000's onwards and eventually cancelled my subscription about 5-6 years ago as it did become apparent how much of it was politically motivated or cosmopolitan nepotism amongst their tech friends.

Most of the people I knew who subscribed or regularly read it in the first years has abandoned it by the early to mid-2000s for very similar reasons. I don't think it ever changed, I just think the pattern takes a while for most people to realize how completely dominant it is.

justshowpost• 5 years ago

Thread with caution, tho. Yahoo Combinator itself is just as woke as lugenpresse quoted here and so just around 90% """activism""" too. No, not hacktivism even, just usual swamp.

Anecdote: for me, the most amazing discovery was a woke slogan found in... Gentleman's Quarterly.

FloNeu• 5 years ago

Well I can only speak for the german version, but yes... I mean I would describe it as 'tech./big-bang-theory-nerd' lifestyle magazine with interviews interesting for 'I am the next startup millionaire' peeps who like apple gadgets (and without fun bbtn stuff like comics/shows etc) - well I guess it shines through I didn't like it much and never looked at it again after reading 3 issus. What surprises me is that you just subscribe to a magazine you didn't ever really read(?) and it comes off like one of this wired alt-right rents that complain that rage against the machine is suddenly political and should stop injecting their politics into anything Rofl...

Subbed to wired magazine for the past year. Has it always been like this?

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