Dave Winer has a mixed mood contemplation of 20 years of blogging and his career.
Showing posts with label dave winer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dave winer. Show all posts
Friday, October 10, 2014
20 Years of Blogging
Friday, October 25, 2013
Tech News
Dave Winer :
Tech is where big news is happening this decade. It's time to start doing it seriously.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Dave Winer gave his Blogger of the Year award to Julian Assange.
NakedJen is an evangelist for radical transparency. Jay Rosen says the news process is turning upside-down. And Julian Assange put both ideas together. He says let's know all there is to know. Let's tell the people who take us to war and destroy countries and kill hundreds of thousands, for profit -- no more secrets. We're not just going to suspect you're doing it, we're going to know. And maybe, if they know we'll know, they won't do it.
...
WikiLeaks is the America's Tiananmen. Julian Assange is the tank guy. We all hold our breath to see if we go all the way.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Must read Winer :
Update : I'm mystified that Bill Seitz thinks Winer's commentators do a good job of countering his claims.
Of all the attempts to counter Dave's argument there, the "we could have just bought the oil" is the most naive.
Of course the US couldn't have just *bought* the oil from Saddam Hussain. It would have a) given Saddam rivers of cash, b) let him spend that cash rearming, and so c) put US interests (and military presence) in Kuwait and Saudi at risk again. After 9/11 andtwo years a year of FAIL against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, at least the Neocons (crazy as they were) were smart enough to realize that the US was caught in a trap : they couldn't stay in Saudi indefinitely (that was a pressure cooker) nor could they leave, giving up the no-fly zones and punitive attacks and containment of Iraq; and so allowing Saddam to regather his strength.
Something drastic had to be done. Their Big Hairy Audacious Goal (which was always a kind of open secret) was to re-organize the middle-east entirely : to rescue the comparatively secular people of Iraq from Saddam, thereby creating a pro-American democracy in the heart of the middle-east, which would represent American interest, offer a role model for reforming Arabs in neighbouring countries etc. etc.
Of course, being able to blag the Iraqi oil industry for big business was a useful sweetener, it probably looked pretty good to influencial media barons and helped persuade politicians and their lobbyist masters to get behind the program. But, sure, straight larceny wasn't the strategic objective.
But the fact that this part of the world was considered so important to the US? The fact that the US had to have troops there. That it went to war to roll-back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. That it "cared" enough about the suffering people of Iraq to throw billions of dollars into fighting Saddam. These are all, ultimately, driven by the requirement for preferential access to a reliable, cost effective, supply of oil.
See, that's the joke. We all know it's about the oil, we want the oil, we're taking it by force and we know it, no one wants to say it, and no one is complaining.
Update : I'm mystified that Bill Seitz thinks Winer's commentators do a good job of countering his claims.
Of all the attempts to counter Dave's argument there, the "we could have just bought the oil" is the most naive.
Of course the US couldn't have just *bought* the oil from Saddam Hussain. It would have a) given Saddam rivers of cash, b) let him spend that cash rearming, and so c) put US interests (and military presence) in Kuwait and Saudi at risk again. After 9/11 and
Something drastic had to be done. Their Big Hairy Audacious Goal (which was always a kind of open secret) was to re-organize the middle-east entirely : to rescue the comparatively secular people of Iraq from Saddam, thereby creating a pro-American democracy in the heart of the middle-east, which would represent American interest, offer a role model for reforming Arabs in neighbouring countries etc. etc.
Of course, being able to blag the Iraqi oil industry for big business was a useful sweetener, it probably looked pretty good to influencial media barons and helped persuade politicians and their lobbyist masters to get behind the program. But, sure, straight larceny wasn't the strategic objective.
But the fact that this part of the world was considered so important to the US? The fact that the US had to have troops there. That it went to war to roll-back Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. That it "cared" enough about the suffering people of Iraq to throw billions of dollars into fighting Saddam. These are all, ultimately, driven by the requirement for preferential access to a reliable, cost effective, supply of oil.
Friday, March 28, 2008
This kind of thing is getting so old. But something just occurred to me.
The irony here is that one of Winer's avowed reasons for getting into blogging was to have somewhere to put the record straight (when he was frustrated with the tech. journalism about Mac software in the 90s, when he gave up giving quotes to journalists etc.) But the blogging "river" format actually allows such definitive positioning statements to scroll off into history and get lost. That's why despite 11 years of Scripting News people still don't seem to know what he says and thinks about RSS etc.
Wikipedia, in contrast, has a single static page which is fiercely contested - partly because it's considered to be authoritative. But mainly because it's a well labeled single static page that Google (and so the world) knows how to find.
My advice to Dave would be to take a leaf out of Andrea Dworkin's book and have one static FAQ on Scripting News, prominently linked and discoverable (while flattering, "Who is Phil Jones?" doesn't quite make it from the Information Architecture angle) which just states his claims about RSS / podcasting etc. Keep it up to date when there are new misunderstandings, but generally allow it to accumulate the links and "authority" which currently goes to Wikipedia.
At the moment, Dave's responses to his critics are scattered, intertwingled with ephemeral issues, over dozens of blog posts and comments. No wonder people are still so vague about this.
The irony here is that one of Winer's avowed reasons for getting into blogging was to have somewhere to put the record straight (when he was frustrated with the tech. journalism about Mac software in the 90s, when he gave up giving quotes to journalists etc.) But the blogging "river" format actually allows such definitive positioning statements to scroll off into history and get lost. That's why despite 11 years of Scripting News people still don't seem to know what he says and thinks about RSS etc.
Wikipedia, in contrast, has a single static page which is fiercely contested - partly because it's considered to be authoritative. But mainly because it's a well labeled single static page that Google (and so the world) knows how to find.
My advice to Dave would be to take a leaf out of Andrea Dworkin's book and have one static FAQ on Scripting News, prominently linked and discoverable (while flattering, "Who is Phil Jones?" doesn't quite make it from the Information Architecture angle) which just states his claims about RSS / podcasting etc. Keep it up to date when there are new misunderstandings, but generally allow it to accumulate the links and "authority" which currently goes to Wikipedia.
At the moment, Dave's responses to his critics are scattered, intertwingled with ephemeral issues, over dozens of blog posts and comments. No wonder people are still so vague about this.
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