Since I summed up Esther, I suppose I should sum up Tim.
Tim is a bon vivant who runs various salons (FOOCamp) and conferences. He has occasionally said some profound or even downright smart things, and is generally jovial and quite generous.
He can afford to do this because of the money his company manages to generate from vending bits of information printed on dead trees, or even not printed on dead trees. Somehow, this business continues to profit even when the books are available for free on bittorrent, or even officially available for free online ("Open Source").
This continued money stream is certainly a big reason he's so jovial and generous, but he's also a genuinely nice guy, humble, no doubt because he remembers that he built his company selling UNIX man pages with public-domain engravings of funny animals on the covers.
As i've said before, as a Frank Herbert fanboy i bear him a fair amount of goodwill for his "Maker of Dune" collection of interviews as well as his "Frank Herbert" book. And his book empire is nothing to sneeze at.
Tim O'Reilly and Howard Rheingold and the like I lump together as people who can take abstruse things we understand because we're inside 'em and explain them in a way that gets the outsiders excited and sympathetic and interested and on our side.
Those people -- the marketers, the dead-books publishers, the businesspeople and other loathesomes who will never get it promptly charge in, stake turf in the nonexistence, launch their own lines of conferences, get on the pundit circuits, become the explainers on television and in "Time" magazine and in general totally misrepresent everything for the benefit of the guileless proles, who then, a couple years later, get excited and gibbery. And thus the Eternal September is forever renewed.
So. An endless rush of money and idiots, or purity, stagnation and death. Whee.
without knowing whether he pronounces it "two dot zero" or "two point oh."
After suggesting it dismissively in AEU yesterday, I'm starting to think we really should name this decade the two-point-ohs, after the penchant for believing we're reinventing the whole world anew right now.
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syntheid
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:51 am (UTC)Interestingly
Date: 2009-03-05 06:31 am (UTC)The more you know...
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 07:32 am (UTC)Tim is a bon vivant who runs various salons (FOOCamp) and conferences. He has occasionally said some profound or even downright smart things, and is generally jovial and quite generous.
He can afford to do this because of the money his company manages to generate from vending bits of information printed on dead trees, or even not printed on dead trees. Somehow, this business continues to profit even when the books are available for free on bittorrent, or even officially available for free online ("Open Source").
This continued money stream is certainly a big reason he's so jovial and generous, but he's also a genuinely nice guy, humble, no doubt because he remembers that he built his company selling UNIX man pages with public-domain engravings of funny animals on the covers.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 03:39 pm (UTC)Those people -- the marketers, the dead-books publishers, the businesspeople and other loathesomes who will never get it promptly charge in, stake turf in the nonexistence, launch their own lines of conferences, get on the pundit circuits, become the explainers on television and in "Time" magazine and in general totally misrepresent everything for the benefit of the guileless proles, who then, a couple years later, get excited and gibbery. And thus the Eternal September is forever renewed.
So. An endless rush of money and idiots, or purity, stagnation and death. Whee.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:20 pm (UTC)Also: calumny!!
books bad...
Date: 2009-03-05 08:46 pm (UTC)and GOD I so hate it when peoplet impugNated....
I can't tell
Date: 2009-03-05 08:59 pm (UTC)After suggesting it dismissively in AEU yesterday, I'm starting to think we really should name this decade the two-point-ohs, after the penchant for believing we're reinventing the whole world anew right now.
Re: I can't tell
Date: 2009-03-06 01:11 am (UTC)Re: I can't tell
Date: 2009-03-06 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 07:37 pm (UTC)either:
a) When he started that "factor" show on fox or
b) "who's tim o'reilly?"
or
c) what does calumnious mean?