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TIMESTAMPS

This bounced to me, as it was too long - it'll get through to y'allnow...
Phil

"Ithink," I said to John Battelle, editor of Wired US,
"I think this is our fault."*

In November of 1994, I caught a flight to San Francisco with theGuardian's
Tony Ageh, the designer Rik Gadsby, and the most terrifyingly efficientman
I'd ever seen in my life. His name was Ian Stewart. He was oneof the
venture capitalists responsible for financing Wired in the US.While we
waited for the flight, he arranged us all Executive Club cardsso we'd
never have to wait for another flight again. On the aeroplane,he reeled
off the best places to dine in San Francisco, largely in inflected
Japanese. He booked us into the most sumptuous hotel I could imagine,and
then invited us to an 8.00 am "working breakfast" at his hotel,which was
even grander. He spoke faster than Azeem on Speed, and twitched,as though
he was hearing stock market reports being read out by a voice insidehis
head. Perhaps he was; it was impossible to tell. I had no guidelines:he
was the first Wired person I had met.

As it was, most of his tourist advice was wasted on me. I spentmost of my
San Fran nights in my room, staring like a refugee at the cableTV. I was
not efficient. I was a slacker. Two months before I had been onthe dole,
as I had been for three years, moonlighting in a broken-down stand-upshow
about my BBS experiences. Then a man came up to me one night andasked me
what MPEG did. I explained, and he in turn explained that his namewas Tony
Ageh and that he worked for the Guardian and he wanted to changethe
political system in this country and utilising new technologyseemed to be
a good way of achieving this and he might be launching a UK versionof
Wired and would I like a job?

And I said - and memory blurs whether these were my actual wordsat the
time - if this gives me a chance to go to San Francisco andwatch Talk
Soup and E! News and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 drunk at 3amin a black
and pink decorated bedroom and get paid for it, why the hell not?

I was taken along, because I was the only editorial person theyhad to show
the Wired US team. I'm thinking "this Ian Stewart guy commutesto his
London job from Switzerland, he got funding for Wired - the bestfucking
magazine on the planet, he is the extropian ubermensch, and *he's*just
their money man. What are *they* going to be like?"

He turns to me and says, 'I'm sure Louis will be very interestedin what
you have to say'.

And I'm thinking: Now I am going to have to fake this efficiencything,
very, very seriously.

In the hope that it will somehow protect me from my fellow Haddocker's
undying hatred for what I did back then, some historical perspective:this
was 1994. Delphi had just been bought by Murdoch. HotWired wasa month or
so old. The Electronic Telegraph was there, just about. Most peoplewhen
asked had not heard of Bill Gates. We didn't know it, but thesewere
prehistoric times: the crypto-Mosaic era.

So, I'm sitting in Louis Rosetto's brand new giant office in SOMAwith
Louis, Kevin Kelly, Jane Metcalfe, and John Plunkett (Wired's designer).
Kelly asks me what the UK scene is like. And, I'm thinking "well,it's Cix,
and it's demon.local, but I fucking hate them because they're brain-damaged
jabbering fools who think it's the height of sophistication toexpress
their crippled emotional needs in terms of Blackadder quotes andI'm fucked
if I'm giving this to them". (You know what I mean.)

So I said, 'I think the UK has to grow its own scene - I think peopleare
waiting for something like this to happen there. But it will besimilar -
there is a global coincidence of desires for this'. God, I wasproud of
that ad-libbed phrase: a global coincidence of desires.

Kevin Kelly was really kind - I only ever met him again a coupleof times.
He didn't seem to spend much time at Wired. He just popped in occasionally
with a new sparkling idea: a self-editing Negroponte. Jane Metcalfewas
chatty, and explained about how they'd employed so many new people,and how
amazing it was that so many of them were Scorpios(?), and huggedme and
hoped that I was well. Plunkett was a smiling happy man of whom,for some
reason, people were apprehensive.

I was scared of Louis from the moment he entered the room. And ashe
glanced around at us, it was clear the start that he had rumbledme too.

I was not, his long stare seemed to indicate, nor would I ever beas long
as I lived, one of the Wired.

After that meeting, I had a one-to-one with John Battelle, the editorof
Wired US. Battelle is a pumped-iron, testosterone-bristled Hemingwayof a
geek. Que efficient! He asked me how Wired UK was going to run.It was at
this point that I, if it was I, made the "decision", if it wasa decision,
that I think fucked Wired UK from the start.

I said, "Well, obviously, we'll create some of our own content,take the
best of your articles, and wrap them into one magazine".

Up until then, there were two possible ways Wired UK could havegone. We
could have done it all ourselves, designed it from scratch, writtenit from
an utterly new perspective. Or we could be an imitation of theUS version,
dominated by the American content, ruled by Plunkett's look andfeel, less
pages, less ads, same price: locked into the global Wired brand.

It would be ridiculously egotistical to think that I was responsible,but I
do keep thinking that I doomed Wired UK with that sentence. TonyAgeh, when
I asked him much later, said that even if we had have pushed fora
completely novel magazine back then, they would never have accepteda Wired
independent from the brand. Well, I don't know. Maybe we'd havehad a
chance had we fought for it then. Later, we fought back, and muchlater,
Hari and the team were granted some independence, but it was toolate. And
what could we have given them back then? Dave Winder? MacUser designers?
WebMedia (Forget it Steve, you knew you were blagging it back then)?
Intervid?

We moved on. I acted efficient. It was no use. A few days later,Louis came
up to me. He looked at me for about thirty seconds, then said 'Ithink you
dropped this'. He'd found my passport. He smiled a little, butdidn't seem
to think it was that funny, and I had no way of showing that Iwas
grateful.

If I try to remember when Wired UK really turned into Hell '95,it was when
the art director left. The art director was Rik, employee#2. Everyone in
design loved Rik. Was he a good designer? Fuck knows. I never gota chance
to see what he would do. Were their other designers they couldget in? If
there were, they could never find them. World-famous people wouldstalk
into the office, look at what Plunkett wanted, and walk out again.No-one
seemed to be able to work with Wired. So we had five or so junior
designers, whose sole job was to follow Plunkett's instructionsto the
letter. My abiding memory of Wired US's relationship with the designteam
was when Tara Herman, a Wired US employee, went up to one of themand said
'Louis wants you to design a no-smoking sign for the office'. Designersand
smoking were synonomous at Wired UK. Oh, no, they did not wantto be Wired.
Wired sacked their friend. Wired were the 'fucking Americans'.

And what about editorial? Well, editorial quickly got caught inthe war. It
was fairly clear from the start that we were going to need helpfrom the
US; when things got rough, about the only sanction the US couldpull on the
magazine was to deny us that assistance.

Often we had no idea what they were doing. And we couldn't do anything
different to fill the space, because they were scared we'd fuckit up.
Understandably scared. The vacuum of British happenings - the lackof a
scene, the absence of that coincidence of desires at the very startof '95
- meant some very odd things got caught in the mix. Robin Hunt,the news
editor, was as interested in the media as things Wired. John Browning,the
editor, wanted lots of Economistic articles. Rob Leedham, the features
editor, loved consumer stuff and little else. Dave Green kept hishead
down. And I continued to be highly inefficient. Coming up withenough ideas
to fill a Wired UK is hard; harder if you never leave the officebecause of
the office politics. And impossible, if you begin to forget, asI did, what
it was all for. I came up with about one decent idea every monthor so. I
wrote a piece on Menwith Hill; I co-wrote a piece on Demo Coders;I
commissioned a piece on the Scientologists; I wrote an articleabout 3D and
the influence of Elite on the UK. I'm proud of them all, but itwasn't
nearly enough.

I left Wired UK mentally long before I got sacked. By thatpoint, I was
sleeping about four hours a day. I was living in shit; my flathad fallen
apart during my absence. I'd usually get in about 4am; it was more
convienient to sleep in the office. I shook a lot of time. I'dcry most
days. I hated issue 1.01, and really pleaded that it be postponed.It was a
farce of what could be done. The Brit side insisted it go ahead.I felt
sick every time I saw it on a billboard, on a newstand.

Louis came into the office that week and told us that 'It was thebest
issue of Wired he had ever seen'.

When I heard him say that, I thought, you might be Wired, but you'refull
of shit too, and I hated him then, almost as much as the peopleI worked
with hated him.

Tony resigned around the time that Rik got pushed. To be honest,I can't
remember the details. I can remember a long, long evening whenI and I
think Robin and Stevan Keane tried to work on the magazine whileyells and
shouts came from the other office. Tony walked out, tearsclearly in his
eyes. Louis, and I think Jane came after, shaken.

After that, it got nasty. They were utterly mad times. The officesgot
burgled, and Tara was held at knifepoint, alone in the building.I stayed
up with her, and had to explain to Louis that Brits were now tryingto kill
his staff. A mad guy someone had commissioned to do something onBurma or
Indonesia or somewhere came into the office and ranted that peoplewere
tracing his modem. I walked him outside, and he showed me the parkedcars
that were following him. Wired US launched a law suit against theGuardian,
and thus tried to stop production of its own magazine. Robin Hunt,
chain-smoking and as paranoid of Wired US as the mad guy was ofthe CIA,
practically wrote an issue on his own (that's the famous 'missingissue').

Eventually, the Guardian ceded control to the Americans. The Americans-
and who wouldn't forgive them? - sacked everyone. They tried tokeep on one
of the advertising staff and Dave. The ad guy, who'd watched histwo
friends lose jobs that they'd taken at a fraction of their usualsalaries,
said fuck you. Dave stayed on for a few issues, then wandered offon his
own course. They even sacked efficient Ian Stewart - he's now workingwith
Douglas Adams and Digital Village. I kicked around at the Guardianfor a
while, helping, inefficiently, to set up the New Media Lab. ThenI went to
Edinburgh. By that time, Tony was leaving the Guardian to go toVirgin Net,
and after doing the Spin for the BBC, I joined him.

           Tony sat next to us on the bench in South Park after a
           private meeting called by Louis. He was in a strange kind
           of shock - the sort of shock I've seen described on the Net
           by others who have had a private meeting with Louis.
               "He just said, Let's divide the world between us.
                You can have the East, and I'll take the West."

San Francisco is such an optimistic town, and, while Wired itselfis
actually a pretty mundane place to visit, its very ordinarinessfilled me,
briefly, with the belief that Wired UK was possible. I loved meetingthese
people, loved the culture they sought to represent. It was onlyon the
flight back that I got worried.

On that flight, I got into a blazing row with Tony Ageh; the onlyrow that
I've ever had with him. Tony isn't efficient. He's not really wired.But
he's a very charismatic man, and I'd say a visionary too; he'seasily a
match for Louis in that.

We were talking about something that Louis had said, something thatmade
Tony uncomfortable. Louis had talked about Wired being for 'thedigerati' -
'guys who'd been teased at school for being geeks, and who arenow earning
millions while their schoolmates flip burgers'. Wired UK, Tonyinsisted,
was going to be for everyone - even the burgerflippers. I stuckto the
Louis line. I said, these people are defining the future - you'vegot to
write a magazine for them. So why, said, Tony, can't everyone definethe
future? Isn't that what it's really about - everyone at last, defining
their own future? Can't this magazine help create a place whereeveryone
can take these tools and use them for themselves?

What Louis is doing, he said, smacks of revenge - of comeuppance.He's
turning a global change into a vengeance tale. And so it went on,me
insisting the value of representing the thoughts of the wired,Tony
claiming that the function of any magazine he produced was to distribute
power as widely and irretrievably as possible. We almost literallycame to
blows, rocking and pushing on the plane even though we were onlyan armrest
away. The argument was never resolved; eventually we fell asleep,awkward
and furious.

Hours later, I woke up. We were above the Arctic, and through thefrosted
porthole, I watched the Northern Lights, something I had dreamedof seeing
since I was a child. I didn't wake Tony. I made him miss it all.

Wired UK's original editor, Stevan Keane, once spoke of the visibleeffect
the Wired collapse was having on me. He said it was like watchingan only
child caught in an ugly divorce. I still don't know which one ofthem was
right - Tony or Louis. I just learnt that the views I hold, when
personalised, are surprisingly incompatible.

But, even through all my fucked-upness - which continues, as youcan no
doubt see, to the present day - I still held and hold two thingsto be
self-evident: that there *is* a global coincidence of desires,and that the
UK needs to grow its own variation on that coincidence. I reallyhope that
the short life of Wired UK contributed to that growth, even ifmy part of
it was small compared to the rest of Haddock. At least knowingthat makes
my Hell '95 worthwhile. And I also think - and I hope this is some
recompense to everyone at Wired UK now, who must be going througha hell of
their own - before that growth was complete, Wired UK needed todie.

* - The quote at the beginning of this piece is the only contributionto
Wired US I ever made. I said it at a Wired editorial meeting wesat in on.
Someone (I think Constance Hale) asked why the Canadians were sodifferent
to the Americans - in this case, their ambivalence to unfetteredfreedom of
speech. I said it was our fault, thinking about the British influenceon
Canadian culture - how that ambivalence was one of the differencesI noted
between the UK and the US. And I was thinking about the Loyalists- over a
hundred thousand Americans who, after the War of Independence hadbeen
lost, were exiled by the young nation.

Portrayed as wealthy snobbish traitors by the patriot Americans,they were
actually a wide cross-section of society who had chosen not tolive in the
US. Chief amongst their reasons was the prejudice shown them -Loyalists
were denied voting privileges, to buy or transfer land, or bequeath
property. Much of their land was confiscated by the new Republic;a few
were tarred and feathered, hanged, drawn and quartered. And sothey sailed
off to the rocky grounds of Nova Scotia and the remains of Canada,to tiny
unfertile parcels of land bequeathed to them by the King. Britaindidn't
care for them, America despised them: they were called by historians'a
people without a country'. Most of them ended up there in Canada,
influencing that country for generations.

They didn't just travel to Canada, though. Five thousand travelledto the
Bahamas - mostly black slaves. They received their freedom in 1807,and
went on to build a new kind of independent state, neither Americannor
British - described now, by both, as a paradise, of sorts.

(if you forward this, let me know who you forward it to. i imaginei have
most of my facts completely arse-backwards, and i'd like to passon any
corrections. thanks -d.)