Re: Jude Milhon in WIRED

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> rishab@dxm.ernet.in says:
> > WIRED 3.02 (February) interviews Jude Milhon (St. Jude) who "is a charter
> > member of the cypherpunks - a term that she coined." I didn't even know there
> > _was_ a charter.
> 
> Or a Jude Milhon, for that matter. Another example of the continuing
> decay of a once proud magazine...

I'm not sure what Perry's not having heard of Jude Milhon is supposed
to mean, or how "Wired" interviewing her is "another example of the
continuing decay," etc.

In any case, Jude Milhon has been active in the hacker-writer
community, going back to the 1970s. Steven Levy's "Hackers" has
several pages on her role in various things happening in the Lee
Felsenstein circle of folks (there may be some of you who have no idea
who Lee is....I can only hope that when you find interviews with him
you not assume decay is occurring). More recently she was an editor at
"Mondo 2000" and has had various connections to Cypherpunks.

Jude was indeed the coiner of the "cypherpunk" term, and was at most of
the early meetings, for at least the first year. (My FAQ will have
more information on how Jude came to think of the name and whatnot.)

She's not presently subscribed and hence can't speak up in this
strange matter of how an interview with her implies a magazine is in
decay.

(I'm hoping this is not what Perry really meant, but I can't see any
other interpretations based on what I quoted above.)

I just don't think Jude deserves this kind of casual trashing. 

While I haven't been reading "Mondo" regularly for a couple of years,
and while I'm getting bored with "Wired," this doesn't mean that
people being interviewed deserve trashing. (Indeed, the "bleeding
edge" trendiness of "Wired," say, means that nearly anything once
"wired" is fated to be marked as "tired" by the "stimulate me!"
Starbucks crowd of techno-yuppies. Unlike a more staid journal, like
"Nature" or "The Economist," as examples, trendy techno-style mags
like "Wired," "Spin," "boing boing," "Future Sex," and a hundred other
wirehead variants of "Vogue" and "People" will appeal precisely to the
style mavens who so fickly announce what is trendy and what is not.

Anyone who professes to be "disappointed" by "Wired" was clearly taken
in by their hype.

(For what it's worth, I still enjoy flipping through the pages, often
finding one or two items that spark my thinking. No, much of it is
junk. So what else is new?)

Oh, and on Rishab's original point about "charter members," I took
this in the usual figurative sense. A charter member of the
Cypherpunks is basically just a card-carrying member. (Hint: Find your
own cards.)

--Tim



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