Some time back, I was offered Wired Magazine on one of those airline miles-for-magazines deals, from one of several airlines I don’t expect to use much in the future.
I’d subscribed to Wired back in the days when reading it was an ordeal thanks to “innovative” design and typography. While I found much of the writing good, I found the overall attitude so absurdly deterministic (digital is always better, the new always replaces the old, Negroponte and Jobs are both saints and never ever wrong) that I give up on it.
When it started coming again, I saw several things:
- The layout is much more conservative. It’s easier to read the text.
- It’s a Conde Nast magazine–which means it’s not only generally well written but generally well edited and even proofread, with strong production values.
- But it’s still Wired–except that now it seems to be an even stranger mix.
It’s possibly worth noting that I’d also been visiting Wired.com every day or two. I stopped doing that because I didn’t need more material for the snarky sections of Cites & Insights and eventually found the cheerleading and oversimplification (and, yes, Apple-worship) tiresome.
That turned out to be true in the print mag as well–even though along with the product reviews that reminded me how silly most product reviews are (outside of Consumer Reports and specialist magazines) and the sheer digital triumphalism, there were and are some first-rate pieces of journalism.
I’d decided to give it up. That turned out to take a lot longer than I expected–because another mag-for-miles deal, Conde Nast’s newish business magazine, folded before I received my first issue and the publisher chose to extend my Wired subscription.
Now it’s finally coming to an end: The June 2012 issue is the final one.
The publisher’s been trying pretty hard to entice me to stay (it’s all about the guaranteed base circulation for advertising rates). The last two offers have been on the absurd side: $15 for two years of a monthly magazines.
Was I tempted? Well, not very much, but…
Your Next Car Will Drive Itself
There’s the killer. The 72pt (inch-high), all-caps, bright red text on the February 2012 cover. (I’m a couple months behind on magazine reading.)
In somewhat smaller type: “NO TRAFFIC JAMS NO CRASHES UNLIMITED TEXTING.” Now there’s an interesting trio…and I’m guessing that “UNLIMITED TEXTING” is at least as important to the target demographic as the other two.
My immediate response to the big bold text?
BULLSHIT.
I knew damn good and well that for a fair number of the well-to-do folks who read Wired (and yes, there are lots of those), their next car would have been purchased between the time this issue was published and the time I read it. Not one of those cars would drive itself.
I finally read the article. “Let the Robot Drive.” It’s a pretty good article, actually–and, of course, it certainly does not say what the cover implies. The most optimistic projection (and I’m suspicious of that) was that by the end of the decade, self-driving cars might be fairly standard.
In other words, for the cover to be right, no Wired subscriber can buy a car for the next eight years.
[Realistically? Yeah, I’d love to see self-driving cars, if the car mfrs. assume the liability when things go
wrong (oh, that’s right, things never g
o wrong where computers are involved). I’m not at all convinced that they can really work effectively unless every car is self-driving and it’s not possible for a self-centered idiot to override the autonomous features. Think that’s gonna happen next year? Next decade?
Maybe. I’d love to see it. But the cover turns out to be such a pure example of the hype that makes Wired run that I’m tempted to save it, just in case the publisher comes back with even more absurdly low renewal prices.
I’m just as happy not to have the website and the mag as unending sources of stuff to make fun of in my own writing. There’s enough of that around in any case. If you love Wired, I’m sure you’ll continue to do so. Don’t let me discourage you.
