The Rise and Fall of Wired.

The Rise and Fall of Wired. 6. The Sell-Out. By Stephen Downes [2010 That link is dead but here is a new one.]

” What we were dreaming about was profound global transformation. We wanted to tell the story of the companies, the ideas, and especially the people making the Digital Revolution. Our heroes weren’t politicians and generals or priests and pundits, but those creating and using technology and networks in their professional and private lives – you.”

Also has a list of links to what he calls the GOOD articles in WiReD

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Brill’s Content: Human Portals

“Giant Internet portals are struggling. News outfits have cut staffs. So why is the Net getting more interesting? A surge of independent-thinking Web enthusiasts — the human portals — are cataloging data and news on their sites and making us rethink how we get information.”

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Books of the Month — Index
“May 2001
David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy, eds., The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge, 2000. Reviewed by Aimee Morrison and Kate O’Riordan.

Allan Lightman, The Diagnosis. Pantheon Books, 2000. Reviewed by Ana Viseu.

Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass, The Media Equation. How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places. CSLI Publications, 1996. Reviewed by Mikael Jakobsson.”

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TCUP

The Collective Unconscious – an interesting dream project. Being discussed in Psyber-L.

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OJR J.D.’s Web Watch: Party’s Over for Web Freelancers

“Two short years ago we were partying away, Gatsby-like, in the Golden Age of Web Freelancing, a time when dozens of spry Internet startups with an insatiable hunger for content opened their fat wallets and showered talented young writers, editors and artists with bylines, beaucoup bucks and long overdue respect.”

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The party is over idea is araound quite a bit. However my hunch is that it is also a case of “business as usual on the net”. Information still wants to be free – and those who valiently tried to do the unnatural thing – will need to reassess.

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EVHEAD!: Essay And Then There Was One
Wednesday, January 31, 2001

“It’s probably become obvious to the careful observer that all is not well in the Land of Pyra. Rather than wait for the public speculation and debate, I’m going to say what exactly is going on (from my perspective — not speaking for anyone else on the team or as an official Pyra/Blogger representative). I’m sure the public speculation and debate will happen anyway, but I don’t plan to take much part in it. I have other things to do.”

This is how it is at Blogger! Damn.