By its advertisers shall ye know it - aftershave, televisions, watches, masculine skincare - could it be that the new British version of Wired isn’t that interested in the geek market anymore?

Wired UK, relaunched in April 2009 (Photo: Josh Russell)

Back in the 1990s, when Wired was published in the UK by Wired Ventures in association with Guardian Media, the focus was quite clearly on geekdom, the wonder of the interwebs and all that would bring. Today’s Wired, now owned by glossy magazine powerhouse Conde Nast, advises on shopping for laptops, espresso machines and folding bikes. That’s not the only Conde Nast touch. An extraordinary piece of hagiography on Paypal founder Elon Musk by an American GQ writer sticks its tongue so far up Musk’s arse you can see it waggling around behind his eyeballs. It took me a while to figure out what this reminded me of - the sort of reverent celebrity portrait you find in other Conde Nast magazines. Musk sounds like an interesting and decidedly odd figure that could form the subject of the sort of profile that Michael Lewis delivered of Netscape founder Jim Clark in ‘The New New Thing’ (Penguin, 2001) but you won’t find anything that gripping here.

The overwhelming impression given by the new Wired is of bite sized chunks of stuff on gadgetry and shopping, with a light sprinkling of teledildonics, street fashion and how to get the best from your camera phone. In other words, you might just as well save yourself for the Sunday Times In Gear supplement - all that’s missing is Jeremy Clarkson. In fact, there are some lengthy features - apart from the hymn of praise to Musk, there’s an interesting and bizarrely out of place piece on credit derivatives risk that seems to strayed in from the Economist, some gossip about the politics in the BBC behind the iPlayer launch and a hugely manly piece about shipping salvage (the hero of which has a “square jaw” and a “don’t-even-try-bullshitting-me-stare”). The only articles that in any sense fitted my memories of what I remember from my beloved original British Wired (avidly read, carefully stored, lost in a move) were the one page opinion pieces and Start section, which does on occasion mention the internet.

The strapline on the magazine’s cover is ‘the future as it happens’. I’m not sure how deconstruct that - back in the 1990s, did we really think that the far frontier of communications was folding bikes? Maybe it implies that the future is all so hopeless all we can do is shop for watches, jackets and knives (p86-88)? Maybe it’s something to do with the way the internet has allegedly killed our ability to concentrate for more than a few seconds or on anything that doesn’t come with a price tag.

Over in the latest US edition of Wired, there’s a lot less about shopping (although laptops still feature) and it’s kept to one section unlike in the UK edition where it pops up all over the place. There’s a lot less of everything, mind you, as the US edition runs to a recession conscious 128 pages compared to the UK’s 184. But it is the first edition - my money’s on it slimming down rapidly. The US features are more geek relevant too - social media, the brain, energy options. Even the boy’s own account of a diamond heist contains an impressive level of technical detail. Overall, the impression is of a magazine with its own mind rather than an inflated Sunday supplement or lads’ mag.

I’m probably on my own here - everyone else I’ve spoken to about the new UK Wired loved it and maybe I’d have loved it too, if it had had a different title. It’s an entertaining read - but it just isn’t Wired.

By Jane Adams