my comment:
I used to be a fan of the idea of a mechanism for saving the best of the web - for making our work accessible after bloggers have died, to be sure the good stuff lived on. A sort of museum might be nice, but that’s not what Dave is talking about. Museums don’t feature me because I say I’m important. There is a process to becoming worth preserving. It’s more than technology and dollars.
Maybe we SHOULD have to lose one another here.
Maybe it will keep us human.
Maybe if we keep one another alive here, we’ll soon be twittering along for a year before we realize someone’s dead.
Maybe we can get rid of grieving altogether, get back to work, keep posting away, as long as we know that our dead friends’ site has been preserved in plastic, encased in gold. That’d be super!
Maybe it’s up to the family. Maybe they want to decide I was an asshole they want to rip down my site. Maybe they should have that choice.
Dave wants to be on vinyl: The best of Dave Winer, collector’s edition, double CD - as if no dave will ever come again. Dave will come again. And again. We are a blip, no matter how many quotes, how many links. There is something honest in others keeping our history. (Or letting it go).
Let the business model of dead blogger books write itself–it doesn’t need help from the top.
Our work belongs to our estates, doesn’t it? Dave wants to plunk down a hundred grand to be sure he’s always here, calling people names, calling for posses. Super. The rest of us — the ones who can’t afford the super deluxe gold coffin edition of blogging — we win the prize: We get to disappear.
The guy with the most money and best algorithm wins. It has been ever thus. Old boss new boss. And so it goes.
Comment by Jeneane Sessum — December 11
