June 20th, 2005
Crosstown Traffic
Now that David Weinberger has released himself from any responsibility for keeping up with blogs, I’m taking the opportunity to release myself from being an evangelist about anything. I hereby renounce the thought that I am carrying the ball, the water, the meme, or any other burden–for RSS, attention, podcasting, or whatever damn thoughtbomb Dave Winer, Adam Curry, Dare Obasanjo, Brendan Eich, or whoever comes up with. I am NOT an evangelist. I don’t think Scoble or Phipps are evangelists either, regardless of what their paystubs say. When you see me on the street, or lurking in the halls of some conference, or via some media format (most likely carried by RSS) do not think "evangelist." Just because I’ve been right about the spread of RSS, podcasting (you’re welcome Jason), attention, and the domination by Jim Allchin of the Microsoft agenda, does not mean I’m evangelizing these trends, business models, or whatever disruptive dissonances they reflect.
Evangelizing implies belief. I don’t believe in RSS. I believe in the beauty of my daughter’s chuckle. I don’t believe in the transcendance of podcasting. I believe in the silence between the notes. I don’t believe in the inevitability of attention. I believe in the immutability of time, or what that appears to be.
We’re at a crossroads, have been for some time. I perceive RSS to be a fundamental trigger for this fork in the road. I derive strength from the power of the audio form. I hope attention will help accelerate the flow of useful information. In Asia (or the crossroads they call Singapore) you have to pay attention to avoid the people with their heads down in their cell phones on the street. The same technology that incents cars to avoid traffic jams will soon reach the pedestrian traffice, I bet. There I am no evangelist–just one more pedestrian with my head in the cloud.
New Gillmor Daily with John Battelle
