“Now Greensboro’s old economic base, manufacturing, has gone to China, and they’re wondering about their future. I suggested that they consider basing their economy on blogging.” – Dave Winer.
The TeleRead take: Of course–just what displaced textile workers in Greensboro and elsewhere 
need. Doc Searls got it just right when he said that economic progress and related benefits will happen “because of blogging, rather than with blogging.” The Winer idea is in the best tulip bulb tradition. I can see some service jobs for blue-collar people when tech- and Net-related growth occurs, including perhaps bloggish endeavors whose employees will use the services of cooks and carpenters; but let’s not overdo it, especially in the wake of the Great Dotcom Bust. The Winer statement is just plain embarrassing for the blogger movement, of which I’m a booster. It detracts from the stellar contributions that Dave W. has made to the technology and its popularization as an enabler. If others weren’t taking the Weiner statement seriously, I’d shrug it off as a joke.
Alpha Bloggers slow to catch on
What I find particularly irritating, in this context, is that Dave W. apparently ignored my invitation to chat about the Democrats’ copyright policies and the relationship between copyright and wealth. A more imaginative blogging community could do much good by acting early and deftly. Just how can white hats try to influence Professor-to-Be John Edwards, a probable Democratic primary candidate in ’08? Mightn’t blogging be part of Edwards’ much-touted poverty center in Chapel Hill and along the way help educate the millionaire professor in Real World Copyright Law?
Why no reply, Dave? I guess e-tulips are more fun. I’m staying away from the Triangle Blogger Conference because there isn’t sufficient interest in my ideas yet among enough of you Alpha Bloggers, but I’m not going to let my Edwards-related proposal just fade away.
Dealing with the Dems–Hollywood-style
The Democrats these days are a Hollywoodish, personality-driven party. Convert the VIPs like Edwards, and the hearts and minds of the trendies will follow. In another post I’ll offer some specifics on how blogging, Wikis and other interactive technologies could be enablers for the Edwards center, as opposed to ends in themselves.
The good news is that a prominent local blogger at the University of North Carolina–none other than Anton Zuiker, the organizer of this morning’s blogging conference–understood in a flash the possibilities here. Just what you’d expect from a Peace Corps alum. And Ed Cone, the blogger and Greensboro News Record columnist, also is open minded. What’s more, perhaps Doc Searls, who went to college in Greensboro, will come around; and then Dave W. and the likeminded can catch up with the Tar Heels and us hangers-on who attended college there. Of course, if Dave wants to smarten up ahead of time, that’s fine with me.
Related: Bloggers gathering outside cyberspace, in the Durham Herald-Sun.
Detail: I’d not have wanted people to boycott today’s blogging conference–just the opposite; this is a chance to learn from Dave Winer and other masters of the medium. It simply wasn’t worth my time and money to travel down to Chapel Hill right now for the purposes I had in mind.
