The DigitalID World conference would have been a success for me even if I didn’t go to any sessions because of who I got to hang around with. I even got to fly back with Jon Udell, whom I first met 15 years ago. I’ve been in awe of him since I began reading Byte over 20 years ago. We’ve had intermittent interactions, but never really had a chance to talk at length.

(Jon reminded me that the first time we met, I’d driven up to Byte’s headquarters to demo a new Interleaf product, which meant schlepping a Sun workstation and monitor. But when I unpacked, I found that the optical mouse hadn’t been included, and there were none to be found in the entire Byte offices. No demo. We laughed about it now, although Jon was laughing just a bit harder than I was.)

Anyway, we were talking about writing. Jon said how much pleasure he gets from shining the spotlight on other people. I talked about the unpleasant neurosis I share with many writers: the need to be the smartest person in the room. If I write about someone else’s ideas, it’s usually to “surpass” them by expanding on them, and sometimes to undercut them. This leads to a fundamental intellectual dishonesty in which ideas are more valuable if they’re mine.

Most writers suffer from this disease for writing itself is often an act of arrogance: “Call on me! I’ve got something worth cutting down a tree for!” (Among politicians, Gore has the disease but Clinton does not; it’s why Gore lost the debates to a moron.)

But, ah, the Web! The Web’s architecture is hyperlinked. Every link sends readers away from your page. It encourages generosity as surely as writing for print facilitates arrogance.

As informal evidence of this, the one place I can consistently see threads of generosity in my own writing is in my weblog. I find it deeply satisfying to point to people who know more than I do, write better, have better ideas.

In at least this one regard, the Web has made me a better person.

(Yeah, you should have seen me before.)

Categories: Uncategorized dw