Item — HN Reader

I agree except that I'd say "when internet access was not ubiquitous" actually. One of the major reasons I bought magazines was to have light reading when commuting by public transport (in my case into central London from the suburbs).

Once the mobile phone had more and more-up-to-date material available there were fewer reasons to buy a magazine.

Nowadays a magazine is something I purchase as a luxury when I specifically want to be offline and without distractions (but even there my Kindle usually does the job just as well).

I must say I miss the quality and depth of writing that one got in Byte and PCW of yesteryear - even though I recognise that the online stuff often exceeds it in both breadth and quality.

2 comments

The best part (for me) was not only the enforced curation but the exposure to "stuff you didn't know you wanted to know about".

With the modern Internet you go right to what you want and rarely see links to things you don't know about already - magazines were great for that, especially on a train ride where you have nothing much better to do than read the "other parts".

HN generally serves that purpose for me!

>I must say I miss the quality and depth of writing that one got in Byte and PCW of yesteryear - even though I recognise that the online stuff often exceeds it in both breadth and quality.

My worry is the online stuff is going to fade away as well. After all what's the point of publishing online if some AI is going to regurgitate your hard work for $20/month.