Find Good Enemies 

Mark Bernstein in a rambling quote-filled piece has one of the nicest descriptions of yours truly. "Dave Winer could be rough if you got athwart his hawse, but he was generally a nice guy who always seemed to want to get a lot of bright people around a big table with plenty of food."

Maybe I'm not the most hated person on the Internet after all?

Re Barger's list playing a central role in the origins of blogging, not sure I accept that the most important thing was a list of blogs, or even a network of them. People who think the task of blogging is to pull people together miss, imho, the important thing about blogging -- that it separates people and gives each individual a place to express themselves, not subject to veto. In that way it is different from a mail list. Blogs emphasize the individual over the group.

The argument continues to this day. People who say Twitter is a conversational medium would agree with those who say Barger was the founder. I see Twitter as a publishing environment, a place to push links, a notification system. Oddly, I think Barger with his linkblog approach (which was the same as the early Scripting News or the News Page of the 24 Hours project) would agree.

Bernstein says many wise things in his post. I thought this one stood out.

"If you wish to shed light on a debate, reply to a weblog post on your own weblog."

Amen.