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R. U. Sirius
Mondo 2000 was a magazine published from 1989 to 1997, influential in early tech culture and cyberpunk aesthetics, reaching a peak distribution of 100,000. It was described as the "voice of cyberculture" and created a desire for the technological future, driven by a team of counterculture figures rather than technologists, and played a significant role in introducing early adopters to the internet.
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Brief Summary
Before the entire world was online, before it was divided into social media enclaves and corporate-sanctioned “likes,” before even WIRED magazine, there was Mondo 2000.
Published from 1989-1997, Mondo reached a peak distribution of about 100,000, but the magazine was even more influential than its distribution implied. M2K was raved about by 90s media outlets, consumed by early tech culture, and demonstrated a transition from the literary cyberpunk style of Gibson and Vinge into an aspirational cyberpunk aesthetic that leaked into the material world. In 1994, Douglas Rushkoff described Mondo as the “voice of cyberculture.”
Published by a rag-tag team of psychonauts and counterculture weirdos, and based out of a Berkeley Hills mini-mansion, the parties and strange goings-on were almost as legendary as the magazine itself. The Mondo publishers — editor-in-chief R.U. Sirius and Domineditrix Queen Mu — were not technologists. Yet their Bay Area publication created a desire for the technological zeitgeist of the coming millennium. In turn, the high (and sometimes low) weirdness of Mondo established a kaleidoscopic onramp that rocketed a lot of early adaptor mutants (or “Mondoids”) onto the so-called “information superhighway” of the late 90s and early 00s.
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