In the manifesto for WIRED that founding editor Louis Rossetto published in the first issue of the magazine (we didn’t have a website yet), he issued a simple edict to his writers: "Amaze us."

Twenty-five years later, it is fun—to say the least—to look back at all the ways that WIRED writers have done that. To mark our anniversary, we've surveyed the archive and chosen 25 of our favorite longform articles going back to the very beginning. Each one is a standout piece of journalism, but in total they create a mini-mosaic of the WIRED world: the people, the ideas, the drama, the incredible change that is still washing over us like, in Rossetto's memorable phrase, a Bengali typhoon.

Some of the pieces tell rip-roaring stories that only could have happened in the midst of a digital revolution. Consider Joshuah Bearman's epic account of the rise and fall of the online drug market Silk Road and its tragic mastermind Ross Ulbricht. Or Charles Graeber's high-wire portrait of the outlaw download king who goes by the name Kim Dotcom. We introduced the world to intriguing new ideas—crowdsourcing, the long tail—that soon became conventional wisdom. And we unspooled the stories of revolutionaries and dreamers who spanned the globe (legendary author Neal Stephenson did that) and journeyed to Silicon Valley in search of glory and riches (as writer Po Bronson showed way back in 1999, it doesn't always go as planned).

"In the age of information overload," Rossetto wrote in that 1993 manifesto, "the ultimate luxury is meaning and context." Here are 25 stories. Luxuriate.

1. Crypto Rebels by Steven Levy, May/June 1993

"The people in this room hope for a world where an individual's informational footprints—everything from an opinion on abortion to the medical record of an actual abortion—can be traced only if the individual involved chooses to reveal them; a world where coherent messages shoot around the globe by network and microwave, but intruders and feds trying to pluck them out of the vapor find only gibberish; a world where the tools of prying are transformed into the instruments of privacy."

2. Disneyland With the Death Penalty by William Gibson, Sept/Oct 1993

"Singapore, meanwhile, has dealt with its own sex industry in two ways: by turning its traditional red-light district into a themed attraction in its own right, and by moving its massage parlors into the Beverly Centers. Bugis Street, once famous for its transvestite prostitutes—the sort of place where one could have imagined meeting Noel Coward, ripped on opium, cocaine, and the local tailoring, just off in his rickshaw for a night of high buggery—had, when it proved difficult to suppress, a subway station dropped on top of it. 'Don't worry,' the government said, 'we'll put it all back, just the way it was, as soon as we have the subway in.' Needless to say, the restored Bugis Street has all the sexual potential of 'Frontierland,' and the transvestites are represented primarily by a number of murals."

3. Web Dreams by Josh Quittner, November 1996

"Now that's an uncomfortable concept to many people in the journalism business. Money? Writers and reporters don't make money, they make truth. That's their line of business: figuring out what's true and then telling other people. Who cares if anyone wants to hear it? Money is the devil, the Great Seducer that leads you away from hard facts and points you toward sweeps weeks and infotainment."

4. Mother Earth Motherboard by Neal Stephenson, December 1996

"Wires warp cyberspace in the same way wormholes warp physical space: the two points at opposite ends of a wire are, for informational purposes, the same point, even if they are on opposite sides of the planet. The cyberspace-warping power of wires, therefore, changes the geometry of the world of commerce and politics and ideas that we live in."