I picked up a copy of Wired yesterday - the May issue I think - and I got angry with it as I usually do before I was very far into it. I think what I don't like is the dishonesty of the analysis, the pretend futurism masking the product hucksterism and the bland thought under the bright pretty colours. One article touched on the recent limited revival of push technology in which the author lightly mocked himself for proclaiming years ago that browsers were dead. What immediately came to mind was the other proclamations they have made that have not been acknowledged such as, say, the Segway or - really - the PDA. I have never seen the first and about 3% of the people I deal with on a business basis use a PDA. I suspect WiFi will be the same deal but Wired still promises we will all be on the Tricorders and George Jetson flying cars in just...another decade...sure, that's when. Fun hobby toys for sure but not the backbone of any economy. Trains, highways, tool and die makers, phones and paper still provide that.
Interesting to note that the magazine is still fairly thin, not likely ever to re-attain its April 2000 thinkness plumped by keen if naive advertisers.
Comments
David Janes - May 14, 2004 9:24 AM
I've seen a Segaway once. It was being used as an advertising gimmick on Queen West. I curse the day I wasted money on my Dell Axim.
Alan - May 14, 2004 9:53 AM
Have the new light laptops and the multi-purpose cellphone destroyed the PDA? Probably. I also like to think people are not so stupid as the product implies - that you can't actually remember things.
Arthur - May 14, 2004 10:07 AM
I have never seen the first and about 3% of the people I deal with on a business basis use a PDA.
Oh, they use it. For the first couple of weeks, and then it's thrown in a corner because the software on the PC doesn't work together with the software on the PDA. Or the other way around. Or there's no Word processor or Spreadsheet.
(Not that I mind the 'flashiness of PDAs'. But if you're going to use it to play songs, why not just buy an MP3 player?)
Arthur - May 14, 2004 10:09 AM
Not related: snappy domain host/server provider, you have Alan.
Alan - May 14, 2004 10:13 AM
What do you mean Arthur on your second comment about the provider? Can you elaborate on the snappiness?
Arthur - May 14, 2004 10:49 AM
about the provider? Can you elaborate on the snappiness?
For some kind of reason, posting comments here goes plain fast: it's snappy. It's there without doing tedious refreshes in the browser itself.
Adam - May 14, 2004 12:05 PM
Wired lost me with their headache-inducing color scheme from when they first launched in the early days.... before the bubble burst.
Somehow, I was never able to bring myself to take it seriously, or even read it after that awful orange and green. Ugh.
Alan - May 14, 2004 12:57 PM
I will send your congrats to the lads at silverorange who I believe let me use the application and sit on their servers free as part of some community service order granted years ago. Being one of only a handful of blogs operating under this privilege I am sure it operates more smoothly than others. I am a lucky blogger...that might have sounded very rude in an earlier era.