Scripting News: Thursday, March 6, 2025
So proud -- Doc Searls wrote this beautiful blog post with WordLand. If I have my way blogging is going to come all the way back and then zooooom out from there. Still diggin! #
Web isn't just a brand, it's also a noun and a verb. "I web you." #
I found the TechDirt piece by Mike Masnick about being a democracy blog disturbing because imho it should have been about democracy at least since 2017, when it was clear that Twitter had just elected a president of the United States. That was a clear strong signal that tech and democracy were tightly connected. #
At the time I tried to raise the alarm, in tech and in finance, that a Republican could buy Twitter for $12B, and that was a cheap price considering the value of the presidency in a tech entrepreneur's hands.#
My experience in Silicon Valley goes back to the late 70s, so I have a pretty good understanding of the personality of tech entrepreneurs.#
My blog, Scripting News, has been about democracy since inception, in 1994, though it has primarily been about technology. I got the same complaints that I should stick to tech, but I didn't see a line of separation. The stakes were large then, but now they're much larger and as Masnick notes, impossible to ignore. #
In the mid-90s there was not much of a debate whether the First Amendment applied to the web, the consensus was that it did not! The NYT didn't defend the 1st A on the web, and Congress passed a law saying the 1st A didn't apply and a Democratic president, Clinton, signed the law. That was a pretty clear signal. (We were saved by a Federal appeals court, otherwise who knows what we'd be doing now.)#
In tech, every generation thinks they're seeing a problem for the first time. This is almost never true. It's like anything else, we're iterative, going over the same issues again and again, and we have a chance to wake up at any point and learn from our mistakes and not repeat the previous cycle, but it seems we never do.#
Most important is that we work together and share what we learned. But first you have to be aware that there is history. You know the famous line about people who "cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."#
We have great historians working here, and TechDirt is more famous than Scripting News is now. It would be a shame if the historians overlooked the historic connection between tech and democracy because they weren't aware it was documented much earlier than 2025. And btw -- don't miss that Google et al would like to deprecate the archive of the early web. No one is paying attention to that problem, and it's another way history is lost. The wisdom of the Google people forcing this on the rest of us is very much like the DOGE bros in DC today. #
Linkblog items for the day.
Charles Barkley takes direct shot at future ESPN coworkers over Lakers, Warriors coverage: 'Y'all are idiots.' yahoo.com
Today's Olbermann podcast was especially good. iheart.com
Jeffries should resign. axios.com
Federal Judge Tells Trump He 'Is Not a King.' politicalwire.com
Worst Hudson Valley, New York Roads for Potholes. It's been a rough winter here. hudsonvalleycountry.com
Andrew Cuomo Gets Endorsement From City Government Workers' Union. thecity.nyc
On Writing Severance: A Conversation with Dan Erickson. pbs.org
"Trump isn't Hitler, he's Marshal Petain." bsky.app
2017: What if TWTR is bought by a Repub? The problems were foreseeable in 2017, after Trump won the election by tweeting. At that time TWTR's value was about $12B. I tried to imagine a tech entrepreneur who had just bought the United States. We're now living that nightmare. scripting.com
Trump plans to revoke legal status of Ukrainians who fled to US. straitstimes.com
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