Scripting News: Essential television

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

Essential television

Watching the Democratic candidates debate on MSNBC, all the candidates sound excellent, if not presidential, the kind of people I'd like to see in the Cabinet.

However, to make an informed vote, to even understand the context that the United States exists in today and in the near future, we need a lot more information about terrorism and the war in Iraq. Luckily, PBS has produced an excellent series that's eye-opening, and fills in a lot of blanks in the picture that's been created for us by the press and government.

You can download all 11 episodes via BitTorrent, and I highly recommend we all do that, watch the shows, talk about them on our blogs. Let's have a great discussion about the future of our country, and have an equally great election in 2008.

And if you get something out of these programs, as I'm sure you will, please give generously to your local PBS station.

Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:43 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.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Mar May