Mark Frauenfelder/Wired interview.
by Alessandro Ludovico
Mark Frauenfelder is Associate Editor of Wired, where he edits the "Street Cred," "Fetish" and "Electric Word" and "Scans" sections of the magazine. He is the editor and design director of bOING bOING, a media-culture magazine. Mark also designed the album cover, singles covers and print advertisements for Billy Idol's Cyberpunk album. His book, "The Happy Mutant Handbook," will be published by Putnam Berkley in 1995.
What is forbidden at Wired?
Wired forbids censorship and racism, both on our pages and in our lives. We don't care what the people who work at Wired do in their spare time. We don't test people for drugs (as many companies do in the USA), we don't have a dress code, we don't care if you are straight or queer.
What's the common 'point of view' there at Wired?
In the '60s and '70s, young people wanted to be rock superstars. Now they want to be digital superstars. Wired's mission is to cover the most important phenomenon of our times, the Digital Revolution, for the people who are making it happen. Wired focuses on the individuals, companies and ideas transforming our world. To a community which is overwhelmed by raw data, Wired supplies meaning and context.
How much earn a Wired contributor (per article)?
We negotiate fees for articles on a piece-by-piece, writer-by-writer basis.
What Boing Boing shares with Wired?
I work at Wired and bOING bOING. bOING bOING and Wired both use many of the same writers. For a while, bOING bOING and Wired were in the same building. The main difference between Wired and bOING bOING is that Wired covers the Digital Revolution, and bOING bOING covers the thousands of fascinating subcultures and pocket universes that have spawned as a result of cheap information technology getting into the hands of: Net surfers, zine publishers, media pranksters, musicians, artificial life researchers, supreme weirdoes, reality hackers, cartoonists, and video makers. bOING bOING is a pocket-universe cross-pollinator.
Tell me three of your favorite other magazine.
"Ben is Dead," which is published and edited by Darby Romeo in Los Angeles. Darby is one of the hippest, most intelligent writers around, and her magazine is at the heart of all the cool things happening in art, music, and culture. (International subscription US$45 PO Box 3166 Hollywood CA 90028 USA). "The Comics Journal" is like Wired for cartoonists and comic book readers. The editors are passionate and serious about their subject, and their interviews with cartoonists are sometimes mind blowing. (International subscription: US$40 surface $75 airmail, 7563 Lake City Way NE, Seattle WA 98115 USA). "Intertek," by Steve Steinberg is a sporadically-published zine about digital technology. Steve's articles are some of the most illuminating, thought-provoking pieces about the Internet that I've ever read. (International subscription: US$18.20, 235 Lakewood Road, Walnut Creek CA 94598)
In your opinion, comics will be digital in the future?
I can't think of many good reasons to make digital comic books. They'd just be more expensive, require you to use a machine to read them, and look like shit. I love reading paper comic books in bed.
You think it could be an unexplored use of the CD-ROM medium?
CD-ROMs should be used to present stuff that can't be presented in a book or magazine. I like Jim Ludtke's Freak Show, because it is an entire world on disc. And the CD-ROM called How God Makes God is a good example of the use of CD-ROM: it has experiments to help you understand the laws of probability, games theory, and genetic algorithms. This is something that can be explained in a book, but when you actually run experiments, you end up understanding the subject in a much more real way.
In your opinion, who has the real opportunity to control the Net (if anyone will have)?
No one will control the Net, because when somebody will try to take over, the Net will mutate or re-invent itself, or move to something else.
What's the strangest and the funniest thing you have seen on the Net?
So far, the strangest and the funniest thing I have seen on the Net have been e-mail conversations between myself and other people on the planet. The best use of the Net is connecting other people. I haven't seen many Web pages that are worth spending more than a couple of minutes visiting.
What's for you the most dangerous technology in this moment?
Dangerous to who? The human brain is the most dangerous technology of all, because it is the source of change.
Think at U.S. States in 2020. What is the political development you fear most?
I fear a corporate run state that has the power to access all personal information of the citizens: monetary transactions, purchasing, conversations, travel, etc. Encryption is outlawed and punishable by death. Every morning, upon arriving to work, you pee in a test tube. Everything not expressly forbidden becomes mandatory. But even then, people will figure ways to hack the system.
Suppose you're on another planet. What drug would you stock in the starship safe?
I would rather find out what the plant-based drugs on that planet were, and use those.
What you think will be the most important development in music?
I'm not good at predicting stuff like that. One of the reasons that music is so great is that some person on the other side of the planet can be sitting in their little apartemt creating some form of music that will shock the fucking daylights out of everybody. Being surprised is one of the greatest pleasures in life. The power to predict what will happen next in art would be a curse for me.
November 1994.