A Cultural Project Based on Multiple Temporary Consensus

Abstract

Wired magazine is taken as a case-study of social engineering in action. The contributors all tried to elaborate a new consensus on the status of personal identity in relation to real and virtual communities of belonging. They did so through a conscious attempt at analysis of the means of production and reproduction in cyberspace. The position of the magazine, militantly activist and always optimistic, set the tone for the social acceptability of the so-called computer revolution. This optimism can be explained by the socio-economical origins of its founders and of the public that they sought. An analysis of their editorial agenda allows us to reconstruct the discourse held by these pioneers of digital interaction, and their attempts at legitimizing their utopia of a technological democracy into a reality yet-to-be-created.