NEWSWEEK: So are you excited about the Harvard fellowship?
Dave Winer: Yeah. Totally. It was like a dream come true. For me it’s great, because I get to hang out with people using this stuff, and I don’t get enough of that. A lot of what we do–all of what we do really–is electronic. Only occasionally do we have face-to-face dinners in the blogging world.
How’s it going to work at Harvard?
Well, basically we set up a server and we’ll offer anyone who has a Harvard.edu e-mail address will have a Weblog for no cost.
Are you going to be on campus?
Oh, yeah. I’m moving to Boston. I’m in California right now. I sold my house, and I’m going to drive across the country.
Are you bringing a laptop?
Of course. And a digital camera, and everything. I’m going to do the first cross-country blog. I should get to Cambridge, probably by mid to late March.
Where will you post?
On two blogs. One is Scripting News [www.scripting.com] which I’m going to keep writing. And we have blogs.law.harvard.edu.
Are other schools, like say a Stanford, going to set up blog programs?
They’ve already asked about it. And I said great. What we’re going to do is publish every bit of information we get about what we’re doing. In other words, everything we learn. And all that’s going to be public. So step one is do it. Step two is then teach it. The thought is that Harvard needs this. It’s a diverse organization, highly decentralized, and that everybody would do better if there were more information shared amongst the different parts of the school.
So now that Harvard has started to blog, you think the other schools will fall in line?
I’d like it to be a little softer than that [laughs]. Nobody is being forced to do anything. I wasn’t at Harvard when this whole thing started. The reason why we came together here is that we’re thinking along the same lines. That sharing information is a very, very good thing to do. So tools that make it easier for people to share information–that’s where the agreement is between academia and the blogging world. And it’s always been that way. Even while the dot-com thing was raging, in a much quieter way, the blogging thing was going on.
When was the first blog?
Oh boy. Of course, that’s much debated [laughs]. My answer is the first blog was the first Web site.
But when did the Web page turn into the blog?
I did my first Weblog in 1996. I think that in terms of the thread that led to where we’re at right now, I think that was the beginning. That was part of a project–I was a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and we were doing a project to show the power of the Internet as a publishing medium for the people in response to the Communications Decency Act, which was this horrible thing that threatened to control the speech on the Internet.
Where’s blogging today?
We’re in a middle of an explosion right now. In the last few weeks, things have just gone crazy. It’s unbelievable to see what’s going on now.
Why’s that? Because Google bought Blogger?
It’s in the air. Maybe it is. When we look back, it’s going to be hard to tell which one of all the different things that are going on [had the most impact]. But there’s just a lot more interest in Weblogs right now. From all corners.
Like where?
There’s an interesting thing going on in [North Carolina]. All the political candidates running for Congress last year all had Weblogs. And I think that’s a precursor of what’s to come. I think politics is going to be revolutionized by this. People are going to have to learn how to communicate with their constituents as people with minds. Not just sound bites, not just blow-dried hair and pretty imagery. Wherever blogging takes root, it’s literacy. It’s wonderful that people are doing this. Even if it’s just writing up what your experiences are in your life even if nobody else wants to read it. Writing is a good thing to do, you know.
What’s the first class your going to teach there?
I’m not teaching class there. My only purpose there is to evangelize, to help people get their blogs going. Maybe I’ll teach a class from what I learn, but we’re not there yet.
How many blogs are out there? Half a million?
I don’t know that there’s any way to know. I mean, because there’s ways to cut those numbers … You know, how many are updating on a regular basis. That would cut it by 10 at least. And then there are ways to inflate it again, because we’re not counting all the different ways. My guess is, when really get down to it, in the tens of thousands, that’s the number.
