Goodbye, "Computerra"

I sit in an armchair by the window, cut off with a glass unit from the sudden cold of December, drink hot strong tea and read the latest issue of Computerra magazine. Habitually: a considerable part of the issues of my favorite magazine was read that way. Black, without a picture, cover, inside - one by one column of different authors who have passed through the magazine for 17 years. In the upper right corner is # 811-812. This is the last issue of Computerra, since yesterday the magazine is no longer published.




In fact, Terra was never a purely computer magazine. They wrote about physics and culture, about astronomy and sociology, about war and linguistics, about cinema and politics, about literature and history, about ecology, biology, philosophy, mathematics, economics, industry ... About people. For this, I and tens of thousands of other readers loved it. "Journal for the discerning" they said to themselves, typing a photo of the disassembled ball mouse.
')
I grew up with Terra. Reading it for almost 12 years, since 1998, I learned a great many things, touched dozens of ideas. She was like a window to the world, playing an important role in the development of my views. Without even flipping through the archive, I can remember a lot of things that I learned for the first time, or that I got to know more seriously when reading CT. Internet, artificial intelligence, Web 2.0, blogs, anime, digital cinema, Stanislav Lem, open source, anarchism, bioinformatics, cyberpunk, bastards, digital photography, e-government, chaos, NLP, artificial languages, Learn, alternative energy, sound, revolution , “The Matrix”, Apple, spam and antispam, augmented reality, IT history, high-tech in war, “Problem 2000”, smart home, globalization, alternative history, nanotech, black holes, social engineering, thinking, conspiracy, Java and .NET , cryonics, social networks, quantum computers, electronic translated translation, India, genetic engineering, tests, perfumery, dark matter, satellite navigation, Japan ...

And today, reading the farewell number, I feel sad. Yes, many said that CT was written out, that there were less and less of such burning issues as they were before. I myself noticed that I switched from reading avidly from cover to cover to selective reading of articles. But - sad anyway. Because reading the thousand-byte articles of the last issue you understand: there is no substitute for “Terre”.

I close the last turn with the traditional “Pismonoets”, finish my tea. It feels like I'm leading the line under the whole life stage. It may even be worth analyzing and summarizing. Or just think. Although, probably, I am too sentimental.

I will save the last number as I keep the number 246 of May 11, 1998.

Farewell, beloved "Computerra."

Instead of postscript . Publishing house "Computerra" continues to work. CIO and Business Magazine magazines will be published, online projects Computerra.Online , Terralab , Kompyulenta will not go anywhere. Golubitsky will continue to conduct his " Dovecote Online ". Other authors are also likely to find (or have already found) a platform.

Almost complete archive of the magazine is available here .

Added (12/16/2009 at 6:12 PM): I quote an excerpt from the column of the publishing editor about the reasons for closing:

The reasons for the closure lie mainly in the economic plane. We already wrote about the problems of the print media three times ago - they touched “Computerra” to the full. Plus a crisis that has confused all the cards. The economics of a magazine are such that sales and subscriptions pay only for the cost of printing and distribution. That is, readers actually pay for the “paper carrier”, but not for the content. Editors 'content, authors' fees and other expenses can be covered only through advertising. And with advertising this year it was, to put it mildly, unimportant.

Some may argue that almost the entire press is in a similar position, and nothing — the majority survives. By and large, I have nothing to answer this argument, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The reasons that led "Computerra" to the closure can be discussed for a long time. In my opinion, one of the main things is that it is unprofitable and unfashionable to do quality things in modern times. The costs are great, and few people are able to evaluate the delights, where it is more sensible to drive the shaft, to produce a massive, easily scalable product. I do not want to say at all that we alone d'Artagnan - God forbid. There are, of course, good and high-quality publications in our market, I just doubt that most of them are profitable.