Very high slash/dot ratio 

David Weinberger's new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, just got a nasty review from Jon Katz on Slashdot. Sez Jon:

Weinberger, an NPR commentator and the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization) understands hyperlinks and their stunning impact. It isn't as if his observations are wrong. The things he sees are new, interesting and significant.

But his book also reminds us that this age of Cybertheorizing began to die with the demise of the original Wired. This is bad news for over-heated tech writers and academics feasting on cyber-culture courses. In case Weinberger hasn't noticed -- and he hasn't, if the book is any indication -- the Web these days is mostly about sex, free news, entertainment and retailing. For better or worse, we remain the same people we were.

In other words, thinking about the Web ("cybertheorizing") is unfashionable, so don't do it. Why care about anything when it won't make a difference anyway?

Did the right to think deeply about the Web expire with the Old Wired and Jon's job there, which was cybertheorizing out the wazoo? Isn't this the same guy who wrote Birth of a Digital Nation and called open source The New Jerusalem just last year in Slashdot? Should the rest of us yield our residual optimism now that Jon's gone all cynical about the Web?

What really sucks is that Small Pieces won't be out until April. Which means the book won't be in a position yet to defend itself for another 2.5 months.

David responded to Slashdot here, and on his blog here. He shows remarkable restraint for a guy who just got blindsided pretty damn hard.

By the way, I have a pre-release copy of the book, and it's terrific. It's wise, thoughtful, original and funny. It deserved a great launch. Not this.

After the new iMac article I went to my preferences in /. and choose not to read Jon Katz's article anymore. I think he has gotten like John Dvorak and prefers to ignite flames rather than be relevant.
I will buy this book on Doc's recomendation.
11:49:58 PM  What do you think? ( Thoughts) Who linked? []   

Doc Searls explains much better than I can:

Why I hate Real, cont'd
RealPlayer fails. Faithfully. Repeatedly. Unfailingly. Reliably.
It just failed again, predictably, in the middle of KCRW's broadcast of the show on which Paul was a guest. I had it running on a machine that was being used for nothing else at the time. I even checked to make sure no other processes risked interfering with it. But it failed anyway, just like it always does, right before Paul came on. I killed it and got to hear Paul's last word. Nothing between.
Meanwhile, I'm sure I could record the next 10 hours of KPIG or any other station that streams MP3s, without fail, off iTunes or MacCast or SoundJam or WinAmp or any of the Linux clients, as long as the line stayed open and the stream stayed up.
Yet for some reason broadcasters, including public ones that should know better, continue to radiate in Real, leveraging the ambitions of a company that has proven, repeatedly, that its last priority is the convenience of the listener.
Arg.

8:06:36 PM  What do you think? ( Thoughts) Who linked? []