Sunday, April 28, 2013

Wired Magazine Turns 20

By the time I started my career in digital media in 1998, Wired Magazine was already firmly established as the leading chronicle of "new media" and high technology and its impact on our culture, economy, and everyday lives.  Both the print edition and website have remained my favourite publications.

The current issue of Wired features an A-Z of prominent topics covered during their 20-year history. In a rare instance most of the material from the print magazine is available on their website. They've even built a cool online interface to access their A-Z list,  that I highly recommend.

I thought I'd share most of the list here. The list is an excellent showcase of the huge number of changes and trends of digital media and technology. It's also a nostalgic trip and test of one's wired cred. How many do you know?
  • Angry Birds
  • Apps
  • Arab Spring
  • Banner Ad
  • Beta
  • Big Data
  • Blogger
  • Carpal Tunnel
  • Code
  • Comics
  • Convergence
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Darpa
  • Design
  • Dreams
  • Electric Car
  • Emoji
  • Etsy
  • Facebook
  • Failure
  • Faking It
  • Flickr
  • Friendster
  • GIFs
  • Geek
  • Gmail
  • Goatse
  • HTTP
  • Hacker
  • Higgs Boson
  • Hypertext
  • IPO
  • Instagram
  • Jargon
  • Kickstarter
  • Kottke.org
  • Kozmo
  • Maker Movement
  • Memes
  • Microsoft
  • Napster
  • Neurodiversity
  • Nintendo
  • Onion, The
  • Online Dating
  • Porn
  • Printing
  • QR Code
  • Reddit
  • Science
  • Screen Names
  • Share Economy
  • Silicon Valley
  • Silk Road
  • Snark
  • Sony
  • Storage
  • Stuxnet
  • TED Talks
  • Titans
  • Trolling
  • Turing
  • Tweet
  • UX
  • Viral
  • Virtual Communities
  • WIRED 01.01
  • Wikileaks
  • Yelp
  • ZeuS
  • xkcd
I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't know six of the above items at all (a couple of which I'm glad I never heard of), and I forgot the names of two.

I omitted their list of people, as did Wired for their online version as the print edition includes many luminaries' profiles. But I believe that although some individuals have contributed greatly to the development to key companies and technologies, it has been all of us that really made these concepts a reality.

I'm looking forward to Wired's next 20 years and hopefully by then I'll have an e-Reader or tablet to read it on and won't be needing print editions finally. 

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