April Fool?

In their April, 1996 issue, the editors of WIRED "predict" a TIME cover story of January, 1997: the "wipe-out" of the World Wide Web, abandoned by corporate investors unable to show profits after 30 months.

WIRED calls this a spoof; but its mimicry of TIME's glitzy cynicism seems more than uncanny...

As Jameson says, parody decays to pastiche, in which we circulate and celebrate the commodity even as we hold it up to ridicule.

YOU CAN'T STOP THE MACHINE...