Wiki Magazines on the Way, Neal Stephenson Is Awesome.

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age offers a portrait of an exclusive community of neo-Victorians living within a dizzying nanotech future. One of the charming quirks of the upper echelons: Reading the same news as other people in their social group—sometimes even on paper:

He sat down at the kitchen table. Mrs. Hull was already marmalading his crumpet. As she laid out plates and silver, Hackworth picked up a large sheet of blank paper. "The usual," he said, and then the paper was no longer blank; now it was the front page of the Times.

Hackworth got all the news that was appropriate to his station in life, plus a few optional services: the latest from his favorite cartoonists and columnists from around the world…

A gentleman of higher rank and more far-reaching responsibilities would probably get different information written in a different way, and the top stratum of New Chusan actually got the Times on paper, printed out by a big antique press that did a run of a hundred or so, every morning at about 3 a.m.

Looks like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is bringing us one step closer to the the future of nostalgia for the past, with a hybrid option:

Jimmy Wales, founder of the user-edited Wikipedia, said users will be able to publish personal magazines using content from Wikia sites. Traditional magazine readership is in decline, with some closing, and the new initiative is aimed at the wealth of information on the Internet that can be personalized….

Using HP's MagCloud, users will be able to print on-demand magazines from Wikia's more than 50,000 communities and 3 million pages of content. To publish a glossy, full-color magazine for friends, the coffee table or mass distribution, Wikia users select the content and cover page, and then order their request through MagCloud, HP said in a statement.

"We have no idea if this will be popular," Wales said.

I wrote a big ol' article about Jimmy Wales here.