Getting Wired for McLuhan's cyberculture

Abstract

The first UK issue of Wired, the self-styled house magazine of the digital revolution, went on sale on Friday 24 March 1995, to some comment from the print and broadcast media. Louis Rossetto, founder and Editor-in-Chief, was interviewed on BBC2 TV's media and cultural review programme The Late Show on 21 March during UK Science Week, providing a background to the magazine's origins and philosophy. He also appeared again in a May 1995 Late Show in a wider examination of the 'information superhighway', offering the optimistic, utopian view, con trasted with the pragmatic and sceptical views. As a computing publication, Wired is noted for the quality and diversity of its writers; by making all the text of the US magazine freely available and redistributable, via the World Wide Web and electronic mail, it is contributing a useful electronic library for students, educators, and media researchers. Ten selected articles from US back-issues are briefly described.