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Will the Condé Nast title succeed second time around, Alasdair Reid asks
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Dan O'Brien's account of what went wrong with the first attempt at a UK edition of Wired (www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk) makes for compelling reading. More than a decade on, it seems like a story from another time on another planet. Which, in a sense,it is. Or was.
But as Condé Nast's senior executives gear up to make a new pass at this one, there are probably worse things they could do than to re-read O'Brien's salutary tale.
It contains an evocative reminder of the aggressively sectarian nature of the US edition in its trailblazing days. It burned ardently with the belief that the advent of the cyberworld would entail the revenge of the geek - and, indeed, many people in this country continued to read the undiluted US gospel in preference to the rather unconvincing edition that emerged over here (courtesy of Wired's fragile joint venture with Guardian Newspapers in the mid-90s).
Ultimately, the classic US model proved fragile, too. It all-too-perfectly captured the undercurrents of fear and loathing in the new economy, while tirelessly manning the pumps that helped prime the dotcom crash.
Consequently, in the cold light of a new century, the geeks proved less threatening than they'd earlier seemed - and Wired, too, evolved. Having...