They are now just as shallow as any other glossy publication that bleats "hey! this a nifty gadget!"
I subscribed to Wired about a decade ago, but I let my subscription lapse when it didn't speak to my interests, like how tech jobs could be exported to anywhere from the USA. What was it about making the USA competitive with India and China that isn't sexy enough to publish?
Wired introduced us to Nicholas Negroponte, the guy from MIT who initiated the One Laptop per Child program. I thought that was great: it's the kind of thing that appeals to my visionary / egalitarian side. I've always thought that computers were supposed to change the world where there would be no more disease nor hunger, the poor of the world would have an opportunity to exercise self-determination in their governments. I saw some laissez-faire / libertarian ideas in it, but it seemed to be a fair exchange of ideas - that was my naïveté.
Within a year, I formed the impression that Wired, like many publications, seem to exist to reinforce the vanity, the ego, of it's readers - not to forward any one thing. Ideals / idealism seemed to be the kind of content never showed up. I never saw anything about the disservice that Apple did to computing or markets by dumping CHRP. There was scant coverage to opposition to Negroponte's One Laptop per Child project by manufacturers who put profit before people.
Wired once sang the praises of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, championing net neutrality. One would think that such editorial prerogatives would support the dissemination of information that comes from hackers like Wikileaks - but that doesn't happen now. It seems that Wired no longer has any principle, save feeding the vanity of it's readers.
Wired hasn't just jumped my shark, it's jumped everyone's shark.
