Re-Wired: Issues 1-3
Reading time: 2 minutes
I've started reading early issues of Wired Magazine. All of their articles are archived online, starting with the very first issue back in March, 1993, though you won't get the cool visuals of the original magazine. I've been a Wired magazine subscriber for a few years now and I figured they would be a great source for learning about how the world viewed early personal computing and the internet in its early stages.
I've highlighted one article I found particularly interesting in each issue below. Articles range from education to politics to business and economics. I'm thinking I'll do this regularly every once in a while for more issues during the first few years of Wired's publication.
- 1.01: School's Out - How the coming information age will take over public schools with what the author calls "hyperlearning". He looks at a future where broadband internet will make all the information in the world available to everyone and how the only way to properly prepare students is be is by privatizing schools. This would allow for new ways of learning based primarily on computer software and better-prepare students for the growing knowledge-based work environment. There's a lot of interesting stuff here that still rings very true today, though unfortunately we haven't advanced as much as we could have, mainly because of the bureaucracy still tied to a school system of the past.
- 1.02: EuroTechnoPork - Examples of technologies backed by European governments at that time that failed, including a surprising one: HDTV. The idea being that the US government should learn from their failures and not promote similar policies despite the great potential of so many new technologies that could improve the economy. We see this today in the form of energy-based technologies that governments in both Europe and the US are investing very heavily in many of which have already failed. Failure happens with companies all the time of course, but the difference is that tax dollars are being gambled away when the companies could just fail on their own otherwise.
- 1.03: Post-Capitalist - An interview with Peter Drucker on a knowledge-based approach to doing business and what it means for intellectual property. We're getting the idea now with how we listen to music on iTunes, read books on our Kindles and enjoy our movies on Netflix.