One paragraph in the latest issue of Wired makes me think that maybe they have found a little bit of honest self-doubt. But we’re talking a very little bit. Still, it’s a start.

I’m an occasional reader of Wired magazine, but when I do read it, I usually get disgusted and have to stop. All they’re supposed to be doing is reporting on what new and hot in e-technology, but somewhere along the way they’ve become purveyors of a philosophy I find disturbing. Increasingly, they have shown themselves to be zealous believers in whatever happens in the next five minutes and zealous atheists about anything that happened in the last five minutes.

Beside my obvious objection to that — that it makes little things like history, real wisdom and Christianity worthless — I just don’t understand how they can think themselves above their own criticism. After all, they’ve been around more than five minutes. But then, the editors of Wired never seemed to look back, never seemed to question their judgment.

So I noticed with a little surprise that there was a little one-paragraph feature in the July issue that indicated a change in that policy. Entitled ‘5 Things We Pronounced Dead Prematurely,’ it was a tiny little list of times they’ve been wrong: Web browsers, online song swapping and others.

Amazing. They can admit mistakes.

Hey, it’s a start. But then, it’s an inch-high feature buried on page 56. What I’d really like is a whole article called something like ‘Things We Lost Our Minds Over (and Encouraged You to Do the Same).’ That would include:

• Y2K meltdown: They were one of the first and the biggest to say that on midnight-plus-one on the year 2001, all the computers everywhere would go nuts. “What happens at 00:00:01 on January 1? Try deadly, black, and very, very cold.” Uh huh.
• The Segway: Remember how CRAZY all these guys went for this thing? This “personal transporter” was only ever a kind of skateboard for yuppies, but that didn’t stop Wired from thinking life would never be the same again. (”It may not change the world, but …” “It’s too soon to tell whether Segway will take the world by storm but …”) Apart from mall police, I can’t think of anyone who has the least interest in the things.
• Global warming: I know, I know. Lots of people — though still less than half the world’s scientists — believe in this. But only Wired could believe it as utterly and be as breathless in its hero-worship of people like Al Gore (”using the power of technology to save the world”), who it pictured on its cover on May 2006 looking almost saintlike. Can’t find a link, so you’ll just have to trust me. It was really, really weird.

The theory of these sorts of neo-Realists is that science will usher in a glowing Age of Man. And of course, all those awful “superstitions” will have to go. If it were treated as a theory, you could dialogue with people about it. But the Technological Utopia believers consider it a “theory” in the same way they believe Darwinism is a “theory,” which is to say that it’s not really a theory at all. It’s a fact that doesn’t quite seem to be a fact yet, so you just have to believe in it extra hard for now.

It’s just as well that the opinion-shapers at Wired aren’t interested in history. Because if they were, they’d find out that this theory has been tried since the 1700’s — long enough for us to find out that things don’t work out quite the way they’re supposed to. But then, that information is only a few hundred years old at this point. You can’t really expect Wired to get the news quite that fast.