[Air-l] questioning authority

[Ted M Coopman]

All,

Ultimately, Wired is a just tech industry rag that reflects that industry's agendas, philosophies, and enthusiastic support of a particular form of global capitalism. If a researcher is interested in the impact, consumption habits, and trends of technology and culture in that sphere, then this is good place to start.

Honestly, I find more worthwhile information and perspectives on the state of high tech in Wired than in most journals. After all, those individuals, companies, and products highlighted have a significant impact on how technology  is developed and packaged, which has a huge effect on the development of culture, social practice, and the economy. The bias in their representation should, like in all media, be taken as a given and a matter of degree.

The critiques of Wired, as excluding alternative perspectives that represent critical analysis, excluding voices that don't adhere to its proto-libertarian philosophy or that challenge its Utopian approach to technology, and is at times sexist or classist, are valid, but not particularly surprising in the context of commercial trade or popular media.

It seems obvious such a commercial enterprise would ignore these perspectives as antithetical to its basic philosophy and self-interest and those of its target readership. Virtually all commercial media, especially special interest/trade magazines, ignore systemic critiques. Why would Wired be any different?

-TED

Ted M. Coopman
Department of Communication
University of Washington

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007, Peter Timusk wrote:

> Of course and what the internet could become is almost meaningless
> (through repetition) asked all the time. How do pop magazines mesh
> with technology progress over time? How real are these next steps or
> really different.
>
> Are there any models of this idea of the next step in the pop media
> or technical press or even the academic press and consumer prices for
> technology or Moore's law of decreasing processor size.
>
> As a further critique and why I am trying to do internet impact
> studies I believe there was very little new written about the
> internet in academia in the late and middle 1990's most was
> repetitive scholarship.
>
> Wired has been well critiqued by women scholars that I know
> of...mostly for sexism but also racism and abilist writing and being
> highly pro capitalist. What is missing is the plain none hyped
> impacts of the net.
>
> Witness my systems science course where we are studying bio-
> evolutionary models of economics and evolutionary algorithms and not
> one female scholar on our reading list. Very cool systems science
> views NOT.
>
>
> Peter Timusk,
> B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University
> Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa (2006-2007).
> just trying to stay linear.
> Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.
>
>>   In fact, I imagine there are significant, perhaps
>> impossible-to-overcome, methodological hurdles for one who would
>> attempt to decide or measure what the Internet "is [for]."
>>
>>
>> Kevin
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