You know why I read Dave Winer's weblog? Because it is an online soap-opera.
Since he is relatively open with what he thinks, he sparks a fair amount of discussion. And he has quite a few influential ideas, like XML-RPC and RSS. But, really, those are just the icing on the cake. They keep you watching in between the meaty episodes of which geek gets outraged next.
Another reason I read Dave: Wrong as he is about so many things, as much as he is able to tick people off, he gets this fundamental thing right:
It's people, not machines. Oy. Machines make people more powerful. Don't expect machines to become people. What a looney toons notion.
From yesterday.
So many people who heavily involved in technology get this wrong. Almost everyone who is scared of technology gets this wrong. Machines enable people. They help us create. They help us teach, sing, live, etc. They are not the enemy.
We have seen the enemy and he is us.
— Pogo
And they are not our friend. We, whether enabled by technology or not, must love each other. Machines will never do that for us. That is why the world depicted in The Matrix is a dystopia.