offline Magazine: Digital to Analog Papertization
offline Magazine is an analog internet: a free and accessible means to access the world wide web's wealth of information without a computer and without direct access to the information superhighway. Up until now, information has been flowing one way: from the concrete world to the digital world. Magazines, newspapers, music, movies, essays, books, recipes, etc. are reproduced online. The nightly news might mention blogging or social networking, but we think the net deserves more. It deserves its own magazine. We're taking the digital, bringing it back to the physical, and reproducing it on paper.
There are literally billions of web pages, which makes selectivity a necessity. We narrow the scope of offline by following some loose criteria.
First, we write for the sake of humor and entertainment. There are countless chunks of intellectual ridiculousness floating in cyberspace. We can gently poke fun at sites, use sarcasm, and deride the most outrageous for comedic effect. It's not too difficult to find humor in the absurdity and strangeness of some sites, but we're not trying to be mean. We're simply pointing out the cultural, social, and individual oddities that often amuse.
Second, we provide useful information to readers. You can think of the magazine as a very selective web directory that conveys information about sites or categories of sites (obscure and otherwise).
Third, offline is, in part, an intellectual pursuit. The internet is a really weird entity and the public hasn't had much time to reflect on its impact. A goal of offline is to help demystify the relationship between electronic information and the real world. There is now a generation of young adults that have lived with the internet their entire lives. This godsend / beast, awesome tool / scary oppressor deserves some serious public examination.
In short, we're filtering and reconstituting the internet on paper for public enjoyment.