Tag: Dave Winer

[Link] Dave Winer on How Tech Comes into Existence

It’s not uncommon that we complain about the bugs in the technology we use. Dave Winer, who’s been developing software for over 4 decades,  sympathizes:

many people don’t understand why all the bugs don’t disappear at once. Or why I made the software do something they don’t like. Because they don’t see a process. How can you blame them, even if they were here with me, all they would see is someone typing at a keyboard, going for walks, hanging out. How that turns into functionality, they don’t even know that it does turn into functionality.

The Aeon article linked to in his post is worth a read too

[Quote] Loving your job

A little over ten years ago, my father had an accident and it put him into a coma that lasted a month. He was intubated, and put in a ward where they parked people who were in various stages of vegetativeness. I spent a lot of time there, reading to him, watching out for him, and I got to know various people on staff in the hospital. I had thought these were some of the worst jobs in the world, but I got an impression that it was quite the opposite, so I checked it out, and they all said they loved their jobs. I had plenty of time to think, and I realized that in many jobs, esp the ones I have done, the way you help people can be kind of abstract, hard to visualize. But people who care for others as their job, see the result of their work every day, all the time.

Dave Winer

Communicating also means Listening: [Article]

I quite often forget that listening is as important as speaking in communication. Dave Winer had a very pertinent post about this a couple of days ago:

I tend to do a lot of talking myself, I’m aware of it, so I try to reign it in. Tell my mind to listen and not talk. That’s hard for some reason, but it’s important. Otherwise why bother spending time with others? I can hear myself talk any time. This is a different person across the table. Someone I don’t see every day. What’s their experience? What can I learn from them? I want to know. And if I can’t get my mind to quiet down, none of that happens.

A few perspective about the reasons for large-scale spying [Article]

Dave Winer articulates. Read it.

We can’t change any of these things. We will have an economic collapse. The climate will disrupt our lives in unimaginable ways. And hackers will rule us. All this will happen.

Charlie Stross had a recent blog entry about this too.

George Carlin referred to this a long time ago. Will anyone listen?

Money, Satisfaction, & Happiness – [Article]

Dave Winer had an interesting post, triggered by Barbara Streisand’s money: 

I have opinions about what money does to people because I have been lucky enough to have money do it to me. Having money is nice, but not nearly as nice as poor people (which I have also been) imagine it is. But then I wondered how other people deal with money, and I wondered if they all reach this conclusion.

Now, I’m sure I’m right that money doesn’t buy happiness, but when you first get that message, what’s your response? I think perhaps some people go into denial, and insist that it must.

There are some exceptional links in that post – enjoy yourself.

Dave Winer: Why I write [blog]

I read about Dave Winer in an article that Om Malik wrote about people who inspire him. Ever since, Dave’s is one of the first blogs I read as soon as I wake up (sometimes, even before I’m out of bed!); as is his river of news. After several months of reading about it from him, I finally caved in & installed the OPML editor and use it as my diary-writing tool (& enjoy it too, although a spell-check would help me significantly!).  Dave, in a longish post, explains why he writes on his blog.