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October 31, 1999
We're Big in Germany. David
Hudson wrote a lengthy
piece on Epinions.com that features quotes from me and Jason
Kottke. The article is in German, but David is letting me post the
English language version.
October 30, 1999
Scatterings from Austin. I had a chance to attend a few presentations
at the conference.
Bryan
Boyer gave a thoughtful (if a tad short) talk on "Hidden
Information Spaces." (formerly "Implicit Information
Spaces," I don't know why he changed the title.) Layering is
such an extremely important notion in screen design, and so often
ignored by Web designers. My guess is that the metaphor of the "Web
page" unfortunately instills a print model of static display,
a confining box we must free ourselves from.
Michael
Sippey gave an excellent talk on content
and commerce. This is strong, heady, and useful stuff. I wish
he'd let my company hire him.
The most fun I had was
moderating an ad hoc panel on "The Future of the Interface,"
a session cobbled together with Lane
Becker, Tim Gasperak,
Jeff Veen, and Bryan. Lane
chimed in with populist notions of how the Web has brought an awareness
of interface to society at large (Lane was also the panel rambler,
thoughtwandering over to the Media Lab's stream
of consciousness project, and calling up an old favorite of
mine, the wily reviews
of Bil Keane's work on Amazon (check out the "author's"
review)), Jeff discussed his desire to see continued and better
separation of Content and Interface (through technologies like
XML and style sheets), Bryan was able to further plug implicitness,
and Tim focused on expert tools for expert use, throwing
around the word "morphology" with reckless abandon. Tim's
ideas reminded me of Douglas
Engelbart's original interface attempts, which weren't meant
to bring Computers to the Masses, but in fact were meant to augment
intellect through specialized tools for specialized use.
October 27, 1999
DoaCD. I should be punished. As part of the Marketing
Force for the New Economy, I've found myself using the word "message"
as a verb. As in, "We need to better message the Web of Trust."
I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I promise to use "impact"
and "architect" only as nouns.
DoaCD. Wanna
job? This has become my standard greeting. I say it with my
tongue-not-too-much-in-my-cheek, because while I don't want to be
the Recruiting Tornado, well, damn, I need a creative team.
Of course it has.
Last night, over
beers with Lane and Bryan,
the domain name "cliquehere.com" occurred to me. Checking
up, it has already
been taken.
October 24, 1999
Huzzah! Keith
Dawson has broken down and started the TBTF
Blog, already filled with scrumptious goodies.
If I were a girl,
I'd be Amy Christine. That
was the name my
mom had chosen for me prior to birth. She was so eager for me
to be born female that the reality of my sex was a cause of disappointment.
And meant I went unnamed
for the first couple months of my life. My
dad suggested "Harry,"
(I was born premature and still covered in fine hair) which mom
vetoed without thought (thankfully.)
Mom settled on "Peter,"
naming me after two men she knew, loved, and respected for their
warmth, intelligence, benevolence, and caring: Peter
Rashkin and Peter
S. Beagle. I remember meeting Rashkin any number of times throughout
my life, and have been in touch with him by email for the last few
years.
I met Beagle so long
ago, though, I do not recall it. I know of him the way most others
do, an author of fantasy stories, most notably The
Last Unicorn. (Though a particular treat is his A
Fine and Private Place, written when he was 19.)
Two weeks ago, I was
able to reconnect with Beagle thanks to a book reading he gave at
The Booksmith
promoting
his latest work, Tamsin.
I'd phoned my dad beforehand to see if there was anything he wanted
me to pass along. This prompted him to call Beagle directly, and
they had a pleasant chat, during which my dad told him that I would
be in attendance.
After his hour talk,
where he read passages from the new book and answered questions
from the audience, he made his way to the front of the store where
the signings take place. Stepping up to him, I blurted out, "Peter?
Hi, I'm Peter." Expecting a hello and a handshake, I was pleasantly
surprised when came forward and gave me a big hug and a warm greeting.
Trundling to the front,
we chatted briefly. "Apart from certain members of my family,
your parents are the only ones who send me a card every birthday,"
he informed me. We did some other quick catching up, promising to
be in touch if we found ourselves in the other's city.
I gave him a book to
sign, which he did as such:
"For Peter --
my only namesake, with love and delight.-- Peter."
Lots! How
much do we love Metascene
for including this piece of JavaScript code?
<SCRIPT>
<!-- function close_nagwin(){
var popupURL = "blank.html";popup = window.open(popupURL,
"TripodPopup",'toolbar=0, location=0,directories=0,status=0,
menubar=0,scrollbars=0, resizable=0,width=0,height=0');
popup.close()}
close_nagwin();
//-->
</SCRIPT>
The last word.
From: "Dave
Winer" <dave@userland.com>
To: peterme@peterme.com
Subject: Your three issues
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 00:14:22 -0700
Maybe you're
digging your hole even deeper.
1. I honestly
think my contribution to idea processing software is as important
as Engelbart's or Nelson's -- because I shipped software, and
they did demos and gave speeches. To say that my "thoughts have
inspired only derision" is totally unsupportable. Are you omniscient?
Can you read the minds of everyone who has ever read anything
I've written? Get off your cloud dude, join the rest of us.
2. I did not
lay claim to the name Dave, or even DaveNet. If you're friends
with Dave Pell, consider the possibility that your friend did
something tacky. DaveNetics and DaveNet are very confusable. I
know this because people get confused when I tell them I write
DaveNet. That's just a fact Peter, it's not something to have
an opinion about. It happens. You wouldn't know because (I assume)
you don't list DaveNet on your resume as I do.
3. I was simply
responding to Rogers' outrageous statements about Third Voice.
The fact that you found the idea offensive proves my point. At
least I didn't write it on his home page!
Dave
October 23, 1999
The days go by so quickly.
Ooh! Ooh! Aaah!
Today I was called a "cluttermonkey" by a guy who is helping
me straighten out my apartment. A cluttermonkey is one who covers
every available flat, level surface with, well, clutter. Stuff.
Perhaps an explanation
is in order. I received an interesting variety of responses
from my October 20th post, some supportive, some scathing, others
wondering on what side of the bed I had woken up.
If I hadn't copped Todd's
"shut-the-fuck-up" bullets, probably no one would have
noticed. But Todd's meme is just so damn funny, it wants to be spread.
And it's power has been demonstrated in this little situation.
My issues were threefold.
1) Putting himself side-by-side with visionaries such as Douglas
Engelbart or Ted
Nelson. I mean, c'mon. How classless is that? Those two are
widely acknowledged cybernetic pioneers whose thoughts and works
have truly inspired generations of workers. Dave Winer is a guy
who wrote some pretty good and useful applications, and a man whose
thoughts have inspired only derision.
2) Laying claim to the name "Dave." Particularly as I'm
friends with Dave Pell, the publisher of Davenetics, and I know
he had no intention of riding Winer's coattails. He probably just
thought it was a funny-ish pun on Dianetics. Winer's repeated public
sideswipes at Davenetics are further testament to his lack of class.
3) The last reason is on a more personal level. In a discussion
on Userland, Rogers Cadenhead,
a friend, took reasonable issue with Dave Winer's campaign against
ThirdVoice. Winer, seemingly unable to maintain a civil discussion
when somebody has the gall to disagree with him, replied with an
utterly bizarre
post that included "If any Third Voice users are tuned
in, check out Rogers' home page. See the little boy? Want to have
sex with him?" (The boy in question is Rogers as a child.)
I still reel when contemplating the level of tastelessness, crassness,
and classlessness of that statement, whether or not it was made
in jest.
The obvious comeback
to this response of mine is, "Didn't your post lack class?"
Perhaps. It was shot off quickly, in the heat of high annoyance.
I'm willing to own up to my off-the-cuff remarks, unlike
some (scroll to October 21st for an explanation.)
October 20, 1999
Hrm. That screenshot
looks familiar. Sehr interresant!
Where are those "shut-the-fuck-up"
bullets when you need them? If
you're as sick of Dave Winer's self-congratulatory nearly-breaking-his-arm-patting-himself-on-back
posts,
may I suggest this blast
from the past, courtesy of Webster.
(And tremble when realizing just how long he's been blathering like
this.) And then make sure to subscribe to Davenetics,
which, unlike DaveNet, is a truly useful source of information (and
funny, too!), and realize why Winer should be thankful people are
confusing the two.
Frag your processes.
Care of Greg comes "Doom
as a tool for system administration." It's creator posits
some good reasons for this method of visualization.
October 19, 1999
What I tell you three times is true. Industry analyst Amy Wohl
recently wrote an thoughtful piece on peer-managed
knowledge management. Epinions is mentioned in a worthwhile
discussion of how the Web brings meritocracy to content.
Mathematics for poets.
From Nature's
Numbers, an engaging primer on mathematics, comes more testament
to the power of storytelling:
"Textbooks
of mathematical logic say that a proof is a sequence of statements,
each of which either follows from previous statements in the sequence
or from agreed axioms--unproved but explicitly stated assumptions
that in effect define the area of mathematics being studied. This
is about as informative as describing a novel as a sequence of
sentences, each of which either sets up an agreed context of follows
credibly rom previous sentences. Both definitions miss the essential
point: that both a proof and a novel must tell an interesting
story. They do capture a secondary point, that the story must
be convincing, and they also describe the oiverall format to be
used, but a good story line is the most important feature of all."
(emphasis mine)
October 18, 1999
Time? What's that? So, I can see that my new job will be getting
in the way of my blog, at least at the outset.
And my blog will become
quite focused on Epinions.com.
Maybe it will turn into Diary of a Creative Director.
I'm surprised people
aren't messing with the form of Epinions more. The two best examples
I know of are Gregory's poignant
review of Richmond, Virginia, and my
dad's difficulties with collaborative filtering, the latter
being an engaging thoughtwander spurred by a recent New Yorker magazine
article. If you know of others, please
point me to them.
What's in a job title?
So, I'm a "Creative Director." This is a well-established
job title from ad and design agencies, so naturally I assume there
are problems with it. Not one to be satisfied, I tinker with labels
such as the the nouveau mouthful, "Director of User
Experience," which lead to the shorter "Experience Director."
Has a nice ring to it, perhaps a bit enigmatic, though maybe mystery
is good in a job title. After all that, though, I'm thinking of
sticking with Creative Director, and exploit the opportunity it
offers me to redefine the job title for the New Millennium. (If
it were any other year, I would have simply said, "for the
future," or "from here on," but, well, you know,
Y2K fever and all that.)
October 16, 1999
<-- Couple new epinions are up.
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