Freaks in the Machine: Mondo 2000 in Late 20th Century Tech Culture

R.U. Sirius & Shira Chess. Freaks in the Machine: Mondo 2000 in Late 20th Century Tech Culture. (Under Contract.) Strange Attractor Press.

Overview: Before the world was online, before it was divided into social media enclaves and corporate-sanctioned “likes,” before even WIRED magazine, there was Mondo 2000. To contemporary audiences, the magazine’s appeal is difficult to describe: comprised of a rag-tag team of psychonauts and counterculture weirdos housed in a Berkely Hills mini-mansion, Mondo ran from 1989-1997 and was described by Douglas Rushkoff at the time as “the voice of cyberculture.” This was no small feat—it’s team of editor-in-chief R.U. Sirius and Domineditrix Queen Mu were not technologists in any tangible way, yet their Bay Area publication created a sense of desire for the technological zeitgeist of the coming millennium. In turn, that weirdness of Mondo establishes a kaleidoscopic on-ramp that flung us on to the so-called “information superhighway” of the late 90s and early 00s. Part memoir, part history, and part critical analysis, Freaks in the Machine tells the storied adventures of the magazine’s tumultuous history, strange cast of characters, irreverent content.