Monday, December 18, 2006

The Library of Congress supports RSS. 

The lasagna was so-so 

We had a lasagna party at the house in Berkeley last night.

Lots of Berkeleyites, people from the Hillside Club, and Jen and David from Santa Cruz, Robert and Maryam from Half Moon Bay, my parents from New York City. A full table and lots of food, humor, politics, candles, fun!

So many people not from the US. Let's see if I can list all the places. Holland, Germany, Iran, Rumania, Czechoslavakia, England, Tibet. That wasn't even part of the plan.

Anyway, the lasagna that held such promise was in the oven too long, and while I was tending to this and than, it burned. Luckily there's a potluck on Friday night, I'll do it again, based on the theory that you need to get back on the horse right after you fall off. The dish was good all the way up to the end. And everyone was very gracious, and said it was good, but I wasn't satisfied, myself.

Get your P.O.V. out of M.S.M. 

Dan Gillmor nails it, but doesn't go quite far enough, imho. He says that Time's wording betrays a royal point of view, a separation they cling to, that no longer exists. But I'd go further, and say that the person of the year is not you or us, but me. The correct picture is a camera shot over the mirror looking at Homer Simpson's face looking into the mirror, with pride. The theme song would be the Beatles singing I, Me, Mine. It puts the honor right where it belongs, and the responsibility too. But good on you Dan, for getting your p.o.v. out of m.s.m. and joining the rest of us!

It's not the aggregation of all the voices that matter so much (although they do matter, as in Netflix recommendations) -- it matters more that my mother blogs, or my programmers, or friends. When Silicon Valley types talk about The Long Tail, crowd-sourcing or user-generated content, they're playing the same game that Time is, separating themselves where there is no separation. Each of us has a voice. Sure some of us serve as aggregators, and that used to give them more power. But not so much anymore. That's a key point.

Stowe Boyd: "Everything worth doing is difficult to do well."