''FringeWare Review'' was a magazine about

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...

(predominantly

cyberculture Internet culture refers to culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence ...

) published in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

. Many of the publication's writers and editors were associated with other publications such as ''

Boing Boing ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice wo ...

'', '' Mondo 2000'', ''

Whole Earth Review ''Whole Earth Review'' (''Whole Earth'' after 1997) was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the '' Whole Earth Software Review'' (a supplement to the '' Whole Earth Software Catalog'') and the '' CoEvolution Quarterl ...

'', and ''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

''. The last issue of the magazine was #14, published in 1998. The magazine had an international circulation, distributed primarily by Fine Print, an Austin-based company that focused on 'zine distribution.

History

''FringeWare Review'' was established in 1994. The publication was co-founded by Jon Lebkowsky and Paco Nathan, with art director Monte McCarter and assistant editor Tiffany Lee Brown. The magazine's parent company, FringeWare, Inc., was the first company built on Internet community (the FringeWare email list, later referred to as the FringeWare News Network), and probably the first to use web technology when it appeared. FringeWare also had presences on

The WELL The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL or The Well, is a virtual community founded in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annu ...

and on Illuminati Online's

Metaverse The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and focused on social and economic connection. The term ''metaverse'' originated in the 1992 science fiction ...

, which was conceived as a commercial multiuser object-oriented environment (

MOO A MOO ("Multi-user dungeon, MUD, object-oriented") is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users (players) are connected at the same time. The term MOO is used in two distinct, but related, senses. One is to refer to th ...

). Fringe Ware quickly built an international reputation through the Internet and the magazine. As online communities and the Internet spread in popularity during the 1990s, Fringe Ware became known as an early forebear to online commerce sites such as

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

and to magazines such as ''

'', which named Fringe Ware Review in its Top 10 List. The company also owned an independent bookstore in Austin, Texas, that was an

underground culture Underground culture, or simply underground, is a term to describe various alternative cultures which either consider themselves different from the mainstream of society and culture, or are considered so by others. The word "underground" is used ...

-hub for the city of Austin. Many performances and events were held at the bookstore, for example the first US performance of Austrian art pranksters

monochrom Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop att ...

in 1998. FringeWare was one of many independent businesses to disappear from Austin during the late 1990s. Lebkowsky and Nathan, who met as Austin-based associate editors of the print version of ''

bOING bOING ''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice wo ...

'', originally conceived the company as a way to bring micro producers of cool software and gadgets to market via ecommerce. They began with an email list, which had high adoption among an international set of technoculture mavens and Internet early adopters, and later became known as the FringeWare News Network. Nathan built a web site in 1992, creating an early custom content management system and online catalog of products. This would have become the first instance of ecommerce on the Internet, however credit card companies pre-SSL prohibited online sales, so the alternative was mail-order, and this required a print catalog. While hashing out plans for a FringeWare catalog, the two decided to create a magazine, inspired by

and

/ Coevolution Quarterly, with a catalog in the back pages. Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing referred to the publication as a "magalog."

References

External links

FringeWare.com archive
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

Fringeware timeline
at ''Laughingbone.com'' {{Italic title 1994 establishments in Texas 1998 disestablishments in Texas Defunct magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1994 Magazines disestablished in 1998 Magazines published in Austin, Texas Science and technology magazines published in the United States

History

See also

References

Further reading

External links