Yes, it is very much a shame for important cultural works to be accessible only to those with money. Once upon a time it was considered such a social problem that governments allocated funding to civic institutions where copyrighted material could be read entirely for free. A short and easy registration process would even grant anyone permission to physically take these works home to study at their leisure for a while. Really, it's amazing society survived...

Oh, I've given Wired my money over the years. I have no qualms rewarding good journalism. But your point is well taken -- I'll temper my previous comment: one should not feel bad about paying for this piece!

When I used to buy Wired in its paper form, they had this thing about how "information wants to be free".

Did the original author approve the work being behind a digital pay wall and get rewarded for their work, or was it some later private equity style ghoul who couldn't help but gatekeep and rent seek the duplication of bits as a middleman?

If the latter then maybe we should be sad and angry.

I think you misunderstand the saying. Information wants to be free — it is naturally so cheap to copy and transmit that its marginal cost is effectively zero. That doesn't mean you want it to be free, or that WIRED wants it to be free. Like nature abhors a vacuum, or water seeks the sea, information wants to be free. Yet we still build thermoses and reservoirs.