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Ars's Skeptical Take on Wired's NextFest
jamestech writes "Over the weekend, Wired magazine held its 'NextFest' in Chicago, a demonstration of what the future supposedly holds. Arstechnica's Hannibal visited NextFest, and was not impressed. Regarding a dolphin-shaped water vehicle and exoskeletons for the old, he notes, 'if you're being pursued by a senior citizen then you can use the dolphin to escape.' Wired's been more about style rather than tech since the late 90s, but have they finally dropped science in favor of science fiction?"
Or rather, zombie dog points the way to the future.
Seriously, the world is so fucked up today that I'm actually considering having myself exsanguinated and pumped full of near-freezing saline solution just for the chance of really seeing the future -- the really cool and distant future -- and not Wired magazine's take on it.
I'm hoping for a Star Trek spin-off, only with virtual immortality and holodecks with locks on the doors so you can't be interrupted (self-cleaning would be nice too.)
There may be something like only a one-in-a-million chance of success, but hey, if it works, it would be unbelievably excellent.
Besides, I figure civilization's chances aren't much better.
(and If I chicken out, I can alway use the cooling system for my homebuilt PC.)
Wired has gone the way of Red Herring. They just don't know it yet. Perhaps they are going to try to reincarnate as Asmov's Science Fiction.
Wired has been more eye candy than anything else as long as I've read it
It seems to me that innovation has been lacking lately... there is not a lot to report for 'NextFest' as it were.... at least nothing commercially exciting .... not like black boxes in automobiles, or search engines that really do know what sites you want to see, or maybe RSS in Longhorn...
Geeez, with the amount of innovation being reported in the daily news on almost every major information provider's site, what was the point of NextFest? Its not like you can't turn on the television and find out about the latest in technology...
As I write, there is some story on television about the lineman who now has bionic arms... what were the NextFest promoters thinking?
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"You do not want to incur the wrath of our robotically enhanced, geriatric overlords." Damn! He beat us to it!
There was some Wired bashing in the related Ars thread that I didn't really agree with, and it looks like that theme has been picked up by the slashdot poster. Just to clarify before this degenerates into a pile-on, this article was intended as sardonic, tongue-in-cheek humor. It wasn't intended as a slam on Wired or as a slam on any of the engineers whose hard work I ridiculed mercilessly. If it was a slam on anything, it was a slam on The Future, which has never really been all that it's cracked up to be.
Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
It's not about what's practical, what's available today, what's cool (how many MP3 player stories do you want to read?), it's about the FUTURE and unfortunately it's not going to be rocket backpacks, cities under the sea and moonbases.
It's going to be about taxes, regulatory regimes, investment timetables and all the other boring crap we put up with today...
I'm happy to see someone like Wired still trying to convince us that the future is bright (the dolphin is seriously cool, by the way) but I for one am giving up hope of believing it.
I am a leaf on the wind
God I hope so. I loved that magazine.
The naysayers are wrong. NextFest was a lot of fun. It was like a science museum on steroids--with real live engineers and scientists there to answer your questions. The Nasa exhibit rocked--especially since the mars-rover programmers were there. Yes, it was subsidized by and represented the military-industrial complex, but that subsidy allowed the art-and-design institutes, the grad students, and even high schoolers to participate.
Here's a copy of my original post from last weekend. I don't think people fully appreciated the wealth of talent that was present:
I spent yesterday at NextFest and had really interesting conversations with the scientists and engineers behind the technologies. Whereas most trade shows have marketing-folk, NextFest had the "real deal" folks there. Conversing with them about their projects was quite easy:
Example interesting conversations:
* Electrical Engineers from Sweden working on innovative devices for monitoring power use
* Doctoral CS candidates preseting their thesis projects.
* Art/Design professors from Tokyo and Vienna working on interactive media projects.
* Undergrads from Dublin working on a video game (controlled by breath) which they found equally popular with boys and girls.
* The Mars Rover programmers were there. (I didn't get a chance to talk w/ them, however, but could have).
* The La Vida Robot guys and their teacher (who bested MIT in the underwater bot contest).
IMO Wired is the "popular science for a new generation." Now that it's recovered from its New Economy religious fervor (circa 1999), it's quality has IMHO dramatically improved: the articles are (mostly) sensible and high quality and they've upped the gagdetry reporting. It's the place to go to see "what's new." ("what's new" is a longstanding feature of Popular Science).
.80 US dollars an issue, it's very cheap. (And the $10 NextFest admission included a 12 month subscription). I think it's a lot of fun per buck.
Yes, the "Tired vs. Wired" tastemaking stuff is passe, but for
And I'm not talking about the article-- since when has it been hip to bash on Wired? I suppose it's one of those things the tech elite (or ignorant /.'ers) like to do because it reassures them of their status, or perhaps it's mere bandwagon jumping. What exactly is wrong with the magazine? (And give me something more original than the bad layout one liners)
I've had a subscription for several years, and have always found the magazine a worthwhile read. Sure alot of the stuff we already learn from online publications and news sites, but then the magazine offers enough original material to warrant its existence. They're also different than they were a few years ago because of the increasing number of free tech-sites online. Sure they sometimes take a look at the tech of pop-culture, but this may have to do with the increasing adoption of technology in the public realm. This past issue they had an article on Spielberg's "War of the Worlds", and last issue they covered Lucas-- how is this not relevant to the discussion of technology and geek-culture? Both are revolutionary directors who, despite their occasional misteps and flaws, consistently push the art of film-making and its use of technology.
Anyone who has actually read a recent issue of Wired and found nothing of value can't deny that the magazine offers something of value, especially in a world where we see decreasig numbers of hard-technology publications. After all, if Wired were as useless as some of you say it is, why do we keep featuring Wired stories on Slashdot?
Do not commit such blasphemy as to compare Omni with that magazine which does not deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Omni!
Omni was a magazine of the thinking man.
Wired always was "Ohh, look at us! We are so tragically hip we cannot see over our own pelvis! Look at this game, which you cannot hope to afford the computer to run! Bow before the computer we use to run it! Look at the trends which shall be cool, because we say they are cool! Spend hours reading our tripe because we hide our vacuousness behind insane color choices and bizarre layouts! You are honored just to pay us money!"
Sorry, Wired is to a real magazine what MTV is to real entertainment.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Now sometimes that fiction becomes fact, but in no small part it is because either:
A) Someone states something completely obvious like "Television will change the way people see the world".
or
B) People find certain science fiction concepts so cool, they try to make new technologies emulate the fiction. A good example of this? Star Trek and Cell phones. No, Star Trek didn't create cell phones, but it certainly influenced their direction and design.
Pop culture does that to all aspects. Something becomes engrained and "natural" to us. So we make that idea a reality.
But, no one can predict the future. You can guess of course, and the ones who get lucky tend to be the rich/successful ones. But more often than not people just guess wrong, in no small part because when you guess the future, you are focusing on one single(or maybea handful of things) and assuming that these things will evolve in a vaccum without outside influence. Problem is, very few things evolve in a vaccum, and the wants and needs of a culture change over time too.
All inventions and technology are created to fill a need(be it entertainment, travel, communication, etc). People change, needs change, making the future impossible to ever predict.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
...and the girls still won't date you.
Style is not irrelevant. Portable MP3 players have been around for years. Yet what really popularized them? The stylish iPod.
Fashion has more to do with the future than most geeks are prepared to admit. And, as a recent NYT article pointed out (can't find the link), tech jobs are fleeing the country like rats from a sinking ship, but most of the major artistic design firms -- the ones who put the pretty boxes around the circuits -- are still in NY, LA, Chicago, etc.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Went to a small round table once ~2002 with a newly appointed senior editor at wired who had been brought in from New York Magazine to overhaul the magazine's image and style content strategy. This was just when the mag went to the new format with lots of short, punchy briefs, product matrices and gizmo reviews (and right after they dropped the 3-4 page graphic intro that was ad-dead). He explained that this format tested better with a wider audience than the more geeky tech format (my memory, not his words). This was in no small part precipated by Conde Nast's purchase of the mag.
it's ok though with mags like MAKE taking their place and publishers like O'Reilly staying true to their tech demographic. Hopefully their success will inspire investments in more daring technology coverage.
do the dolphins have lasers?
Sure, Wired is full of ads. And some articles weigh heavy on the entertainment industry. But it also provides some of the *best* writing on technology that any magazine has to offer.
m l
Case in point, this article from the April 2005 issue:
La Vida Robot
How four underdogs from the mean streets of Phoenix took on the best from M.I.T. in the national underwater bot championship.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.ht
Take 15 minutes and read this. It is an amazing story, and extremely well written.