This is a magazine cover I did in summer 1986 for a long-gone trade magazine called TELECOMMUNICATIONS. I got the job for the cover through a Boston science fiction writer friend of mine, who at the time was working at the high-tech firm Bolt, Beranek, and Newman.
The BBN folks were guest editors of TELECOMMUNICATIONS magazine for August of 1986. They contributed articles and could also do the cover if they wished. My friend commissioned me to do the cover for their issue. The commission was to depict in artistic terms a long-range computer/telecommunication network, with individual features such as satellite dishes, computers, personal computers, radio towers, packet switching devices (rectangular white forms, looking like refrigerators), and local area networks inside buildings. The network itself was represented with neon-glowing colored paths, spread out across a stylized city plan reaching to the horizon. White and grey equipment gave the impression of lighted city buildings. I based the sky on a hazy California sunset.
The theme of the magazine was "Advances in Telecommunications." Little did I know that the network I depicted on the cover was rapidly expanding and turning into what we now know as the INTERNET(S). Seven years later, that same friend would commission more art from me and pay me with free internet access.
Acrylic on illustration board, 12" x 15", August 1986. Published as cover to TELECOMMUNICATIONS magazine, September 1986.
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