From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Wed Jun 06 2001 - 18:58:56 MDT
At 08:21 AM 6/6/2001 -0700, Max More wrote:
>At 11:05 PM 6/5/01, James Rogers wrote:
>>
>>Because Wired was sexy, accessible, and had quite a bit of content (in the
>>early days at least). Mondo 2000 was sexy, but lacking content and only
>>moderately accessible. Extropy had content, but wasn't sexy or very
>>accessible.
>
>I would same the same about Wired and Mondo 2000 (though the latter had
>some content, depending on your tastes). However, for the most part I
>think Extropy was no less accessible than a magazine like Scientific
>American. Just look through the issues and you will see many competently
>written articles. Certainly it would have continued to improve along those
>lines if it had continued past the fateful issue #17. As for sexiness,
>clearly it was improving over time as I consciously moved in that
>direction, and as Natasha also strongly guided it that way. That last
>cover worked for many people...
I was trying to remember my impressions of the three when I was first
introduced to them, to give a baseline for the experience of people that
aren't already immersed in these types of magazines. "Accessible" doesn't
just have a technical level component, it also has an experiential
component as well. People who might find Scientific American accessible
might not find Extropy accessible for reasons having directly or indirectly
to do with the topics at hand, rather than the style or technical depth. I
was pre-disposed to find all of these magazines accesible, so it wasn't a
problem for me. There was nothing wrong with the quality of the writing in
Extropy.
I liked Extropy, but I wouldn't classify it to be an outreach tool for
engaging new people. Instead, it seemed to attract people who were already
latent Extropians. I can think of many people I worked with in the past
who *did* read Scientific American and even Wired, who got that "deer in
the headlights" look when they read Extropy. People who really "got" early
Wired, usually "got" Extropy, but people who were fence-sitters with
respect to Wired almost never did. Many avid readers of Scientific
American are often very conservative mentally, and while they are
technically up to the challenge of Extropy, they may not have the
mental/emotional/cultural/whatever maturity to "get" it. I observed many
well-educated and technically savvy people who appeared almost revulsed by
it for whatever reason. I've observed the same reaction to Wired, but
never as pronounced or as often; they talked a much slicker line from the
viewpoint of the masses, which allowed them to reach a broader audience and
pull in some of the fence-sitters. In many ways, Wired was very
well-orchestrated propaganda.
I guess my point is that one has to determine what the goals of a magazine
are as a tool before you can really decide the format and contents. I view
it as a comparison between, say Scientific American and Physical Review, in
that Scientific American is a slick communication piece by The Scientists
for The Masses and may even serve to recruit new scientists from The
Masses, whereas Physical Review is a communication piece by Scientists for
Scientists, aiding communication among scientists but doing little to
communicate with those outside the field. It is nearly impossible to do
both these things in a single publication, so the question is which are you
trying to be? I found Extropy to be largely for people who were already
more-or-less extropians, even if they didn't call themselves that. This
isn't a criticism, just an observation; it assumed a pre-disposition that
most people just don't have. IMO, to engage the masses one would need a
sexier style that operated at more of an "extropian prep-school" content
level, letting people get comfortable with the conceptual framework without
scaring them away. The step from "the masses" to "full-blown
futurist/extropian/transhumanist" is too big for most people; there needs
to be a middle step which I think is missing.
Cheers,
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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