More as an experiment in curiosity than anything else, I've put a couple early issues of Wired (#2 and #3; summer of '93) up on eBay for sale. I've got several duplicate issues from the first few years -- if these sell, I'll put the others out there too. I'm curious: does anyone care about print anymore? (UPDATE: That was fast. Some guy from outside Portland bought them. Thanks Matt! Print lives on!)
You're baiting me, right? Just testing to see how fast it would take me to respond? In 50 years when people are buying and selling copies of Wired on whatever the son of eBay is, what will they do with their collection of early screen-grabs of fimoculous? For many, magazines are not media, but decoration and fashion -- a means to have something sitting on ones desk or coffee table to communicate to others ones identity. Each issue of a magazine captures a moment in time -- glancing back through those old copies of Wired is like hearing an old song: takes you back to another place.
posted by Rex Hammock at 8:40 AM on November 28, 2006 
Paper baaaad. Electrons goood. Narrrrg!
posted by Frankenstein at 9:42 AM on November 28, 2006
Wow, I can remember reading those. Every time I hear Jaron Lanier's name, I still think of that issue. I think I have the issue with Sonic the Hedgehog on the cover, but that might be much later.*
I still really care about paper, but I feel like I am in the extreme minority. I like the completeness of it. I can pull out my NYT's from the opening days of the Gulf War I or the Iraq War and get a real sense of context. That context is decidedly absent when, for example, you read an old article on CNN.com or CNet or similar. You only have a fragment. You can't immediately see what else was going on that day, and there's no convenient way (besides maybe archive.org) to see that context.
One of the things that strikes me when I look through my old news magazines is how naive we were, how all this stuff that used to matter just doesn't anymore.
*Oh, I just checked. It's just a couple of issues later.
posted by adm at 12:20 PM on November 28, 2006
do u have xtra copies of this one?
posted by glitch at 12:42 PM on November 28, 2006
Yay, they showed up!
posted by Matt Haughey at 11:24 PM on December 2, 2006
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