Why Web3 Needs a New "Wired"

In the first-ever issue of Wired magazine, launched in 1993, founder Louis Rosetto published a brief but passionate manifesto stating the publication’s reason for being.

“Why Wired?” he asked. “Because the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon—while the mainstream media is still groping for the snooze button.” Tropical storms are actually called cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, but you get the point: the impact of the internet was going to be huge, and hit fast. 

Rosetto continued by slamming tech media for lacking vision (and being too corporate). “[T]he computer ‘press’ is too busy churning out the latest PCInfoComputingCorporateWorld iteration of its ad sales formula,” he wrote, “[...] to discuss the meaning or context of social changes so profound their only parallel is probably the discovery of fire.”

The year Wired was born was certainly a big one in tech. Intel shipped the first Pentium chips. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina released version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser. Proto-influencer Joel Furr coined the term “spam” in a USENET newsgroup. Adobe launched Acrobat – and with it, invented the PDF format. 

Wired positioned itself not as a magazine about technology per se, but about the community new tech was creating: “the digital generation,” in Rosetto’s words, the “most powerful” people on the planet.

We don’t need to tell you how much has changed since 1993. The term “web 2.0” was still more than a decade away back then, and we have a whole new version now: web3, a decentralized web built on public blockchains, smart contracts, and digital wallets. 

What hasn’t changed, though, is our evolving web communities’ need for thoughtful – and thought-provoking – content. Web3 doesn’t have a Wired. (Some have argued that web2 never really got one, either, but that’s for another op-ed.)

Journalism, in its truest form, is a public good, playing a critical role in the creation of a vibrant and equitable civic space. “True” onchain infrastructure should do the same: built in public, for public use and benefit.

It is because Coinshift is built in web3 that we are able to create platforms not only for value movement, but for sharing information and ideas. 

Sure, we’re a brand – and we think you’ll like our products, too. We’re not a newspaper. But our magazine is speaking to the newest “digital generation”: people with foresight who understand and operate at the intersection of computing, blockchain, fintech, and communication. People who “get” that with each new iteration of the internet – each new number we put in front of the word “web” – the last one doesn’t die. 

We believe in selecting the best, and only the best, of what’s come before and taking it forward with us. That’s why our editors are talking about 1990s Wired, 20 years on. And that’s why our product team is taking cues from neobanking to bring great user experience onchain.

Obviously, we also believe in the power of blockchain to bring about the truly profound social changes described in Rosetto’s manifesto. “In the age of information overload, the ultimate luxury is meaning and context,” he wrote in that first edition. “Or put another way, if you're looking for the soul of our new society in wild metamorphosis, our advice is simple. Get Wired.”

Well, if you’re looking for the soul of the community building infrastructure with the potential to radically improve how we live, together, our advice is simple, too. Get Coinshift.

And keep reading The Value Add.