DonPMitchell:
It would be nice to see a well-written critique or discussion of the downside of Wired Magazine. Many people believe it is shallow and inaccurate. It embraces capitalism in some ways, but also brings in some fairly worthless postmodern rubbish, like articles by R.U. Sirius, etc. And the cover story and trumped-up award for Negroponte some years ago was painfully embarassing. Must be nice to be an egomaniac and own your own magazine too.
Kittynboi:
I agree. Wired is not without more than its share of critics and there are many legitimate criticisms that can be aimed at the magazine and its philosophy. At times, it seems like nothing more than techno-free market libertarian and socially right leaning moderate propaganda. Much of the articles on various companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. read more like fanboyish hero worship than real journalism. the Negroponte story you mentioned was really alarming, as they took a man involved in Iran-Contra, a terrible scandal and abuse of power and the trust of both the American people and the world, and portrayed him as some harmless techno geek, like everyone else who reads Wired, as if he had NO shady past whatsoever. They seemed to give a fawning embrace to the nonsense of Intelligent Design in 2004. They also embrace practically every mindless techno-fad that comes along, hoping for the next big thing. Practically all their articles have an economically libertarian slant to them, and it seems that to Wired, the only meaningul measure of science and technology is how much money those things can make, and the only real good of social progress is the potential for opening up new market demographics. Much of their reporting on pop culture is shallow and betrays that they have little to no understanding of any form of art or entertainment that they report on, and it often comes off as if their research on the video games, films, books, etc. they review consists of doing a single internet search and reading a press relese and then trying to pretend they played the game before giving it an arbitrary and seemingly random rating. The magazine, at times, also has a bizzare fixation with Star Wars. In fact, for the papst several years, it seems that EVERY single issue has to work in SOMETHING related to Star Wars. Either they think this is the be all and end all to geek life and sci fi, or the Wired staff is on the payroll of George Lucas. Many justifiably see the magazine as embodying a wide-eyed techno utopianism, that is largely disconnected from reality. Its like all those absurd books from 20 or 30 or 50 years ago about what the year 2000 was going to be like, and how off the mark they were, only its in magazine form every month and only sets its sights ahead a few years. I mean, really, for all the things wired has championed as world changing next wave of the future business booms, how many of their predictions have actually come true? Also, this is FAR from an objective criticism, but their "wired-tired-expired" thing has to be the most obnoxious feature EVER.
Source.
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