In 2010, a popular Argentine novelist, screenwriter, and blogger based in Spain called Hernán Casciari, got tired of dealing with publishing houses, editors, and mainstream media. He wanted to publish a magazine, but of a different kind. His idea of a magazine had very-well defined boundaries: high-quality content, no advertising, direct sales to the readers, and a luxury printed format. Against all odds, his idea worked: “Revista Orsai”, kicked off as an experiment, and then became a staple and remained a major reference in the history of Argentine publishing.
(Some of Casciari’s ideas, like high-quality content, no advertising, and direct sales to readers, were direct inspirations for the magazine you are reading right now, which only depends on the goodwill of its readership to keep going month after month. Thanks for your contribution!)
Unbeknownst to many, Argentina has had a long story of magazine publishing, including some gems like the literary “Revista Sur”, published non-stop from 1931 to 1992 (and whose contents are available on the website of the National Library, albeit only through a VPN located in Argentina).
I have already mentioned on these pages my own infatuation with programming magazines, and my explorations to downtown Buenos Aires trying to find the hidden gem:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the most appropriate locations in Buenos Aires to find international magazines was the quintessential Calle Florida. In those huge newsstands next to the corner with Avenida Corrientes one could find incunabula ranging from the September issue of Vogue to the latest edition of Paris Match. Among those, every so often my programmer self would jump in joy to find some lost computer magazine; and by far the one that made me the happiest to unearth was, without any doubt, Dr. Dobb’s Journal.
As many things retrocomputing go, programming magazines are largely a thing of a past nowadays. You do not see younger generations of software engineers flocking towards those same newsstands asking for the latest release of Byte, Dr. Dobb’s, PCMag, InfoWorld, 2600, Input, 1337, Phrack, Apple Develop, Whole Earth Catalog, Tilt, Microsoft Systems Journal, Popular Computing, Springer’s Programming and Computer Software, MITS News & Computer Notes, Visual Studio Magazine, or CODE Magazine. And that is sad.
Yet, it is undeniable that computer magazine articles shaped our industry in unfathomable ways. The earliest of them all might as well be “As We May Think”, an article by Vannevar Bush published in The Atlantic, which seemingly kicked off the future at the end of World War II. This piece prophesized in July 1945 many developments that have largely become a reality 80 years later. Let us begin with the cover image: the camera strapped on the forehead of the man shown on the first page of the printed article is literally a GoPro. Also, pay attention to the concerned eyes of the wearer. Now look at yourself on the mirror. Any resemblance?
Twelve years after “As We May Think”, and simultaneous with the developments of the IBM 1401 and FORTRAN, copies of “Datamation” started popping up on selected newsstands. This magazine was the godfather of all programming magazines, and held its crown for 41 years (quite a few ages in computer time!), until being phased out as an online magazine in February 1998.
Indeed, that was the fate of most printed magazines back in the 1990s: to become glorified blogs, each trying to retain its fleeting audience as they moved from a world of manually typing code snippets, to one featuring one of the most convenient sequence of keystrokes: CTRL+C & CTRL+V. The epitome of which was, of course, Stack Overflow, a website that, this author argues, was the final straw for many programming magazines as we knew them.
Some of those online magazines, however, are still standing and deserve a round of applause (or at least a click): Smashing Magazine, Codemotion Magazine, WeAreDevs Magazine, Developer Tech News, SD Times, Human-Computer Interaction Magazine, PoC||GTFO, and the most important of them all: The Register, “biting the hand that feeds IT” since 1998.
Online resources are very practical. Why would you spend time typing those code snippets when you could just summon a Mechanical Turk of anonymous users to solve your problem through copy-pasting? This mesh of answers, now conveniently available in the form of a Large Language Model, provides virtually instant access to bullshit curated knowledge at your fingertips. Why would you spend precious time thinking anymore? I am pretty sure your managers agree with the previous statement.
The name “Orsai”—a Rioplatense Spanish twist on the term “offside” borrowed from the rules of association football–perfectly embodied the rebellious nature of the project. Hernán Casciari and his team have since consistently championed independent journalism, humor, and literature, keeping clear of market constraints and editorial (and advertising) censorships.
But I would argue that Orsai largely succeeded with its audience because its articles made you think. The humor was subtle; the presentation pleasant; the issues tackled therein were fundamental, relevant, important. Argentina being Argentina, there is no shortage of such problems to discuss and analyze.
But here is the twist: our world of computer programming, populated with zealots screaming the “no politics please” mantra at every street corner, needs opinion and analysis more than ever. The lines of software we write are contributing directly to the degradation of our modern world and each of its tenets: its economy, its politics, its values. Between copies and pastes, we have forgotten that we were building the new world that Vannevar Bush predicted, and arguably, we have made a much worse one.
Casciari was arguably not the only one to think that a new publishing paradigm should exist. Wayne Green, the founder of Byte, 80 Micro, RUN, and many other magazines, also stood for higher values in his journalist endeavors, as explained by David Farquhar:
Green’s computer publications were what journalism is supposed to be. They existed to serve its readers, not the other way around. Yes, the business model requires creating an audience to deliver to advertisers, and the combination of subscription, revenue and advertising revenue pays the bills. But when push comes to shove, an ethical publication doesn’t lie to or mislead its readers to avoid angering an advertiser.
(…)
That is the spirit of Wayne Green. He made some mistakes in life. We all do. And in his later years, he went on a big conspiracy bent, spreading beliefs I don’t condone myself.
In the same vein, we can cite Jim Warren, founder of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, who explained its underlying spirit in a January 1991 article called “We, the People, in the Information Age”:
We are more productive when we freely share and cooperate than when we covetously clutch at each incremental innovation — so much more productive, that each individual, and our nation, ends up “getting” more than if we don’t share.
Needless to say, we need more of that spirit, right here, right now.
There is, arguably, a subset of programmers (do we dare call that a market?) that would love to be challenged into thinking for and by themselves, again. The early issues of Orsai, almost 15 years old at this point, and published in an immaculate, and ad-free, glossy paper, stand prominently in my library, reminding me that a different publishing and distribution model is possible. Or even better, that it is sorely needed.
Cover photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash.