Wired, Tired?
When Wired magazine first launched, I was a devotee for about the first year. In that period of time, the magazine broke ground, rich soil that was fertile with ideas, ideals, and innovation. Now, years after the departure of its founders and its acquisition by Conde Nast, Wired is a pale shadow of the magazine I read in its first wild and wily six issues. Imagine my surprise, then, when the February issue hit my in box and grabbed my attention not once, not twice, but a handful of times.

This -- surprisingly -- happened starting with p. 68, just past the midpoint of the issue. I am a fan -- an aficionado, even -- of the front sections of magazines. The front of the book usually includes some of the more short, sharp, and shocking pieces in a magazine. Not Wired of late. Rants & Raves? Yawn: Not the who's who of lettercols even if the mag has retained its fun Return to Sender (now a formal contest with rules printed in every issue). Electric Word? Yawn: They've morphed the previously beautiful image-laden frontispiece with the former front of the book to create a collection of frivolous one pagers. Fetish? Yawn: Can you afford this stuff? I can't (read: so I don't care). Must Read? Yawn: Don't assume it's so.

Now we hit the feature well. Fast Company, my current employer, wrote about William McDonough (p. 60) in June 1998. We covered the Slow Food movement (p. 86) in May 2000. So what hit me, if not how slooow Wired seems to have become? The following:

Jonathan Weber's relatively in-depth feature on the global complicity of Disney

Matthew Yeomans' roundup of anti-globalization activists and organizations

Richard Martin's obituary of the steel industry, which focuses on one plant in Pennsylvania and features some amazing photography by Joseph Elliott

David Streitfield's roundup of influential mailing lists and their proprietors

Equal parts trendsetter and contrarian, booster and conscience, the February Wired almost makes up for the magazine's more notable lapses in judgment: the Zippies, Push, the Long Boom. And even though the meat of this issue only accounts for one-fourth of its page count, my one-time favorite section, Street Cred, still sucks. Sometimes the delight lies in the details. As much as the record review page is increasingly mersh and mundane, Wired has one saving grace that will keep me happy issue after issue regardless of the rest of the content.

That would be the Cool Things That Helped Get This Issue Out minutiae on p. 127. A throwback to the days when Wired shared a building with Might and Boing Boing, this clever, personal piece of indicia shows that the spirit of the founders isn't dead yet; the founders have just left the building. All things said, this issue continues the Net economy reminiscence begun in last month's Rewind issue. Wired still looks to the future but holds firmly onto the past -- leaving readers to hang in the balance.

Is Wired still relevant and useful, or is it a dot-bomb dinosaur? Take the Media Diet poll!