Back in 1997, Wired ran a cover story called “101 Ways to Save Apple.” The cover remains my favorite for a number of reasons, the brilliance of the image, the genius of the singular imperative “Pray.” I’m not sure the story, in which we polled a bunch of folks and created a list – Editors LOVE lists – was that great (actually, point #101 was pretty good: “Don’t worry. You’ll survive . It’s Netscape we should really worry about.”)
This month Wired is revising the 101 Ways meme with 101 Ways to Save the Internet. The story was written by Paul Boutin with input from a few key folks, including several readers of this blog. The voice is almost right, the politics line up, the issues are well chosen, but something about the list feels a bit off. I can’t put my finger on it, but overall, it’s a good rundown of all the issues the Net faces as we head into 2004.
Re: a bit off, the thing that struck me about the article was how much it seemed like a weblog post…the kind of thing that takes about as much time to write as it does to type. Like you said, the issues were there, but the solutions were lacking.
Yeah, but there was soemthing else – some kind of uncomfortable-ness bridging the gap between advanced, early adopting geek and interested masses. As if the piece didn’t know which it was speaking to. It is a difficult balancing act to speak with authority and interest to both parties. But it can be done.