Scripting News: American power

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

American power

Shelley Powers: "To the Chinese, freedom is a threat. To the right wingers, criticism of the Catholic Church was a threat. To some folks in Missouri, the fact that I continually bring up issues related to Johnson's shut-ins is a threat. Exactly how do we define a level of 'threat' in this new Gestapo? Is it in the eye of the beholder? Kathy feels afraid, and therefore it is our duty to hunt down this perpetrator and bring him or her to justice."

In the last week I've defended three people who made a hobby of humiliating me, and I did it with pride, like Nixon going to China, I oozed credibility, as they deserved protection from a mob that was angry, justifiably, at humiliation, and not knowing where to direct the anger, aimed at three reasonably pathetic and defenseless people. I called this a Chorus of Cowardice, and I stand by that description.

Shelley Powers, someone who treats me poorly in her tirades and taunts about the evils of powerful men, whose caricature of me might be the little suited capitalist in the Monopoly board game, tears to shreds Tim O'Reilly's poorly thought out call for more mob justice. I totally agree with everything she says in this piece (assuming she doesn't edit it to spite me). It's what being American is about, tolerating all kinds of speech, especially stuff we don't agree with and don't like.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:37 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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Feb Apr