History by Magazine -- more predictions of the digital future from 1993 that came true
Wired magazine was born just in time to deliver a disconcerting report on what kind of dangerous and dirty fun the government would be up to in the Digital Age.
My weekly take on America's news, culture and ideas -- from exactly 30 years ago. From 1989 to 2007, during the last Golden Age of print, I wrote a weekly newspaper column about what I found interesting, provocative or ideologically subversive in the incredibly diverse and powerful world of magazines. This one appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 30 years ago this week.
Weird is where the future is
Nov. 25, 1993
The future is coming to get us. We can't predict it or plan for it. We can't imagine all the wonders and terrors it'll bring. And nobody can stop it, because it's here.
Ask your boys. Their Nintendo thumbs and Sega eyes already know.
For a sneak preview of the future, get a sample copy of Wired, the Rolling Stone of the Digital Age. Now a monthly, Wired is weird looking and it'll either make you wish you were born 100 years ago or 100 years from now.
Its mad graphics will annoy you. Its ads for Apple Multimedia Programs and virtual reality packages and e-mail conferencing services will make you feel like a caveman. But get used to it.
Weird is where the future is. One story, for example, is about the digital pioneers in Hollywood who are already making whole movies by "compositing" live action with computer-created sets, effects and even characters. I
In the coming New Digital Hollywood, there will be no union lighting workers and set-builders hanging around movie locations, because there will be no movie locations.
Wired's lead story explains the battle between Sega and Nintendo for domination of the U.S. video game market. Sega has its eyes on capturing the entire American interactive entertainment market.
Don't think anyone will care?
See that cartoon creature on Wired's cover? It's Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega's star video game character and the mag's man of the year. He's the third-most recognizable figure among American boys, behind Arnold S. and Michael Jordan.
Another Wired article delivers a disconcerting report on what kind of fun the government will be up to in the Digital Age.
"Big Brother Wants to Look Into Your Bank Account (Any Time it Pleases)" describes how a precocious branch of the Treasury Department has been using computers to track the financial dealings of drug dealers, terrorists and financial crooks.
Some folks think the feds should start using computers to track all of our financial dealings. It's a lousy idea that Wired is rightly worried about. Only trouble is, pilot programs that let state and local law enforcement agencies tap into massive federal financial data banks are already out there.
A more accessible peek at our digital future is provided by Musician's cover story, "Future Shocks, the End of the Music t Business as We Know It."
Very well reported and clearly written for the non-Wired by Fred Goodman, it explains how record stores and record companies as we know and love them are marked for doom by the Digital Age.
In 15 years, he says, music CDs will be sold directly to consumers via cable, phone lines or satellites (as will eventually movies, magazines, newspapers, books, maps, bills and everything else we need or want but don't have to eat or wear).
Oh, and Michael Jackson — unless he's still in rehab or jail — will sell his music directly to consumers who will record their own CDs or just download the data into their home entertainment units. No record company will play middleman.
The technology for all this exists now. It doesn't look like the future, digital or otherwise, is going to be too kind to PBS, however.
In "Adieu, Big Bird," the big point made by Harper's editor Lewis Lapham is that PBS' owners and operators are out of it and PBS is obsolete. It no longer has anything to offer that can't be delivered by channels like A&E or Discovery.
PBS is still living in broadcast year 1973. Lapham wishes PBS would take up the best of what C-SPAN and National Public Radio do, and address the American people as students and citizens.
Lapham is dreaming.
He imagines PBS cameras in lecture halls, teaching hospitals and legislative chambers. What he can't seem to imagine is how hilariously few people would tune in when they've got hundreds of other channels like the Food Channel. Not to mention Sonic the Hedgehog's latest adventure.