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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 been more eye candy than anything else as long as I've read 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/
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
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
I find Wired fully relevant, man. There's nothing that makes me feel more at home here in the future than kicking back in my egg shaped acrylic chair wearing a silver jumpsuit with a primary colored chevron on the front and counting the number of times they describe something non-computer related as a 'distributed network'. That, my friends, is not tired or expired... it is wired. yea verily.