covert.creations

Digital Anthropology

Wired Magazine, circa 1993. I’m not sure what possessed me to fetch this from my shelf. Looking at it now feels like trolling the depths of an ancient tome. Pages and pages of fantastic art and layout, rife with electronic activism, the odd political opinionati, new music, gadgets, terms… this magazine was the true harbinger of change! The buzz in those pages was palpable, the atmosphere hopeful.

They felt like a nimble and progressive business, publishing email addresses of its writers and staff before anyone else. They even filled the pages with “hot links” that took you to gopher sites and newsgroups. Even before the Mosaic and the WWW, it was a literal deluge of the new, and Wired helped to usher it in.

I kept reading and reading and reading, flipping through the ads, the art, the letters…all frozen in 1993. I wanted to challenge the predictions, seeing if they withstand the test of Now. Twelve years later. Ancient history indeed!!

“Much enjoyed reading your magazine – but I am getting really worried. Who’s going to run the world (or even learn how to run it) with all these wonderful toys to distract everyone from the cradle to the grave? All good wishes.Arthur C. Clarke

Sri Lanka

I liked that, but I’m tempted to respond. There is no question about it, Sir Arthur… but remember that the people that grow up in the culture of distraction grow up with much better filters than you.

I curiously stumbled upon the article, “The Dragon Ate My Homework“. Story of MUDs and MOOs and Mucks and kids who should have been doin’ calculus. My story was that I did have accounts smattered here and there, mostly in the UK (University of Warwick IIRC), using my university’s free connection to my own entertainment. I was more interested in the sociological aspects than I was in the actual games of the time. The mere fact that I was conversing realtime with people around the world was almost good enough. And the experiences with my online gaming buddies shaped who I am today. It was highly addictive. But back then, there were truly stunning game ideas propogated through the hallways of those dungeons, feats of programming and user-created worlds. Where the world would react to you and your deeds. Your reputation and actions, etched digitally into the framework of the server database, allowing the world to shape and bend to your behaviour. Eventually to your desires. Wicked stuff back in the day, and all done with a text UI and a relational database. Certainly not the stuff of worlds today, that remain hopelessly inert.

The story of id Software’s masterpiece, “Doom”. The growth of the Internet. The rise of Quake and Internet gaming. Wired documented and oversaw these truly great things, extolling how they could be done from the so-called “bottom” of the heap. It needn’t be pushed into our worlds by large organizations bent on profit. The Really Good Games (and other forms of entertainment were ostensibly created from a spirit of individuality and unfettered creativity. Not written by a committee. Not approved by the board. They were just done because they had to be. And done by you and me.

Just like Wired.

The first, First Post!