Monday, May 01, 2006

Arrived at the Identity Conference. No traffic. Easy drive. 

Listening to Doc Searls. Great speaker. Easy listening.  

Postscript: To be clear, I drove to Mountain View. BART's southern terminus is Millbrae, about 25 miles north of Mountain View.  

Nick Carr: "If Google wants to fully live up to its ideals, to really give primacy to the goal of user choice in search, it should open up its home page to other search engines." 

A year ago yesterday my first thunderstorm podcast. 

Why I like BART 

This afternoon I'm headed down to Mountain View to participate in the Internet Identity Workshop. It's going to be a long drive through nasty Bay Area traffic.

Riding BART is so much better. I finally can put my finger on why. When you're driving, you're in a metal and glass box, by yourself, having to deal with other people in boxes mostly by themselves, and dealing with the aggression of a small number of the people in boxes who are cutting in, and weaving, trying to optimize their trip. I doubt if they actually make it there much before the rest of us do, but you have to watch out for them. They make the trip more dangerous, or so it seems.

On BART, I'm sitting in a moving room with a bunch of my fellow citizens, with no boxes around us. It's possible to strike up a conversation, or make friendly eye contact, to wonder about the stories of each of these people, why is he dressed that way, I wonder where she's going to ride her bike. Human beings were meant to experience other human beings, and mass transit makes travel a bit more human.

When you're driving you can listen to an audio book, or NPR or some music, but you can't read or watch a movie. On BART, if it's above ground, you can browse the web, post to your blog. If it's underground, you can read a book, or the newspaper, or if it's a long trip, watch a movie.

West Wing 

A kickass West Wing again last night. Santos is really getting interesting. Every week it seems more of a shame that the trip is over in two weeks.

There was a piece in yesterday's NY Times about how all the networks missed American Idol, at first, before Fox picked it up. Now it's the number one show.

Maybe West Wing will be like Star Trek. Cancelled, then brought back. Cancelled again, and brought back one more time.

Or maybe it'll be like Law and Order, with all kinds of spinoffs.

Or like the Beverly Hillbillies, with a funny wacked out almost psychadelic spinoff (Green Acres) and a corny cheescake spinoff with a little 60s soft TV porn (Petticoat Junction).

Mrs. Santos is a kick too.

Who could have forseen that Arnie Vinick would remind you of Leo McGarry, but in the end, he does.

It's sad to think the end is near just when it's getting so good again. Maybe we didn't do our jobs well enough, I keep thinking. Maybe we were supposed to tell our friends who left the show when it started getting stale that all it needed, it turns out, was some fresh blood. The new cast is awesome. It's a shame it's almost over.