Last week I met with a client of mine -- Seymour Rubinstein, founder of the company that created WordStar, the pioneering word processor, and the inventor of what became QuattroPro -- and Larry Magid, ubiquitous tech reporter, at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Larry's wife, Patti, also came. Seymour has been working on a new content discovery system for a couple of years, and he wanted to talk to Larry about it.
We had an incredibly delicious lunch -- everything was perfectly cooked and served with panache. "We're here with the 1 percent today," I joked, and the normally stone-faced waiter couldn't hold back a smile. Actually, Seymour was once in the 1 percent, but he took a fall during the aughts and is working his way back out again. With software inventions.
After the lunch, Larry pulled out his MacBook Air (after voicing notes into his Siri iPhone) to get a demo of Seymour's latest invention. I was talking with Patti -- i've seen the demo several times already -- when the maitre d' sailed in, leaning into our benched table like the masthead of a warship, and announced, "We don't permit computers in Chez Panisse."
Larry apologized and said he was about to close his computer. By that time, we'd been at the table for more than two hours, and I could see why they wanted us to make room for new diners. I'm sure Chez Panisse's orders are run by computers, but for those who dine there, personal computers are out.
Yesterday, I went to a talk by David Weinberger, who is with the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and the Harvard Berkman Center, and who is coming out with a new book about information overload called "Too Big To Know." Weinberger attributes the hyperlink as the destroyer of our traditional cultural institutions, such as newspapers, encyclopedias, and music recording. He didn't mention the progenitor of hyperlinking -- Ted Nelson. He just noted the consequences.
Weinberger made three points, and they all reflected more of his background as a philosopher rather than as a technologist (he has a Ph.D. in Philosophy but also was the VP of Technology for the search company that Yahoo eventually bought). He said knowledge is now messy because things don't fit into neat categories anymore (did they ever?). Secondly, he said that knowledge can be inconsistent because the web is a web of differences. The net, he said, is exposing the truth that humans don't agree about anything, even facts. (That's true: Larry Ellison doesn't even think we will die, or at least his head won't die forever.) The third way knowledge has changed is that it no longer has an arbitrary, logical form because people can hyperlink while viewing anything and choose whatever form they like.
All these observations seem rather obvious, but when put into this format, they make one appreciate the advantages of life and work on the net versus what life used to be like when there were just print newspapers and magazines, print books, and vinyl records. Says Weinberger, "The net is far more like the world than print media. That's why it's more appealing. It's closer to the truth. For me, the web has felt like a release. It feels so familiar."
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