'Gadgets and Gurus': Wired magazine and innovation as a masculine lifestyle. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bødker, Henrik
• Is Part Of: Media history. Volume 23:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 67
• Page End: 79
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: men's magazines -- technology -- innovation -- masculinity -- identity -- production -- consumption -- features; Mass media -- History -- Periodicals; Press -- History -- Periodicals; Journalism -- History -- Periodicals; 070.09
• DOI: 10.1080/13688804.2016.1273103
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1368-8804

Abstract

Abstract : In May 2013, Wired celebrated the magazine's 20th anniversary by restating Louis Rossetto's claim from the first issue that '"[t]here are a lot of magazines about technology". Wired is not one of them' (fromhttp://www.wired.com/magazine/wired-20th-anniversary/ ; accessed on 3 July 2013). This article agrees by arguing that Wired in its formative years also should be seen as a men's lifestyle magazine, which—in contrast to the category's usual focus on fashion, sex and leisure—was characterised by a specific type of anticipatory and utopian engagement with innovation and technology that sought to carve out a better life by breaching the boundaries between work/leisure and writer/reader. By focusing more broadly on technology as 'culture' Wired thus allowed for a negotiation of masculinity premised on both work and production and leisure and consumption and thus a new way of weaving the 'authentic' into the contemporary and digital landscape of consumption.