Jeff Walsh on invention and discovery

By Dave Winer on 1/23/07; 3:08:32 PM.

Jeff Walsh: "Who wants a CEO that gets mired in nuance and grey areas?" 

Please read all of what Jeff says, and consider it carefully. It is flattering to me, and like everyone else I like to be appreciated. But his point is right on. Columbus popularized America and deserves credit for its discovery even though Vikings had arrived here, by accident, centuries earlier, and did nothing with the discovery.  

To me, I'd like credit for discovery of some cool stuff, invention of software that makes it work and content that makes it compelling, all of which are neccessary but not sufficient, because the new stuff also has to be demystified, and it has to stay easy to understand, so that rather than intimidate, it should invite discovery by everyone else.  

I don't make credit an issue, other people do. When I said I want to celebrate not just ten years of Scripting News, but ten years of blogging, I got a pile of "who does he think he is," as I knew I would. Well, something started with Scripting News in 1997, whatever you want to call it, I call it blogging. If you think I'm wrong, blog it.  

That's how blogging started by the way. I had a discussion group here, and people would write there how wrong I was about this and that, to which I said -- you need to start a blog. I must have said that to hundreds of people. By giving them something to respond to, Scripting News played the role that a shipwreck plays to a coral reef. You can quote me on that. 

I learned from the Frontier community that people will always do what I do, even when I did what I always wished other platform vendors would do -- telegraph the roadmap, clearly. When I would do that, other people would start to do what I was going to do, and then scream loudly when I did it. That taught me that if I wanted people to do something, I had to do it first. The Pied Piper effect drives adoption and builds communities. It's not surprising that the generation of bloggers that came after the the first generation said they hated me and were trying to steal my thunder. That's human nature. But they were doing exactly what I hoped they would. They blogged their discontent, and as a result built something much larger than one person can build, and then they spawned communities that eventually hated them, and on and on, ad infinitum. 

I also know that discovery comes in layers, as did the blogging world. There are many levels of early adopters. Today there are people who are discovering new applications of blogging in new contexts. Davos, this year will have more blogging than it had in 2000, when Lance and I were (probably) the only two people blogging there. I can't claim credit for bringing blogging to Davos though, because my efforts didn't gain traction and grow. If blogging was meant to happen there, it didn't happen in 2000. Maybe it'll happen in 2007. 

Still diggin!