I feel like I should help Harvard, because Harvard helped me, and if you use podcasting or RSS, it helped you too. #
In 2002, I was ready to leave Silicon Valley, and RSS needed a safe place to be parked, or I felt the tech industry would keep trying to own it, and make it far more complicated than it needed to be. And I wanted the intellectuals of academia to blog. #
So I knocked on the door at Harvard, because I heard they had a program that was close to being up my alley -- the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. My friend John Perry Barlow was a founding member. I figured if they could handle a Grateful Dead lyricist, and general muck-raking rabble-rouser like Barlow, they might be able to appreciate someone of my creative caliber. They accepted me, gave me run of the place, defended us when we got in trouble and great things came from it. But I always felt like a bit of a thorn in the side of the great elite Harvard University. #
Yet I really really really appreciate what they did, but I think what I have to offer might not be appreciated. #
I think they should take advantage of their unique perspective on what's happening in the US, and cover it in a way that no news organization would or could, but the way a great, challenged, revolutionary academic institution would. And it might be that the people who would destroy it don't want to take the risk that Harvard might be heard, and it might be a bit premature for them to think they can take control of an organization that in a sense represents the best of the USA since 1636. #
PS: When Harvard was 140 years old it stood against the King of England in the American Revolution. The Continental Army lived on the Harvard Campus in 1775 and 1776. The precedent for revolution is baked into the soul of Harvard, it seems to me. #
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)