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***Business as usual, I'm busy, etc etc
  Happy Mardi Gras!
  Maisez les bon temps roulez! (Ohhh I wish I really got French.)
  Gambatte! (Same with Japanese.)
  New Orleans. I used to live there. It's the city of slow living, great music, red beans and rice, oyster poboys, Irma Thomas, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, muffalettas, and "Ignatius Reilly". It's a city of a million colors and real audio. It gets all your senses involved.
  Once a year New Orleans throws a huge party. Music, parades, floats, beads, costumes, sex and booze! People get really drunk. It's a Christian holiday. Tomorrow is a day of repentence, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of a sad period, Lent. Let it all out! Let's have fun -- today!
  Sadness. They're still losing the Civil War down south. They spin it differently. The grieving has lasted many generations.
  Today is Mardi Gras. Tomorrow is Wednesday. The party is over. Business as usual, back to the gray world of a society that lost a war many generations ago and hasn't gotten over it.
***Sleeping with Christians
  Another French story.
  I remember how beautiful the Mac business used to be. In 1986 I wrote a letter to the editor of InfoWorld saying that IBM couldn't stop Apple's advance. How true it was!
  I came awake standing in a line at a Mac-only software store in Palo Alto. The idea of lining up to buy software, that's every software developer's dream! I was in need of a pinch. I couldn't believe it was happening. The sure sign of a boom.
  A few weeks later, I attended a party hosted by Apple's lead evangelist. I was so glad to be so far away from the awful mess that the PC software business had become. Ram cram! Dueling software products. Warfare that was not fair. (Yeah I know all's fair.)
  Goodbye cruel world!
  Welcome to the Mac, land of happy software.
  Humming and wailing. Isn't this great?
  Then somone told me that Philippe Kahn was at the party!
  Oooops.
  No!
  This beautiful little haven I had discovered was going to be just as dirty as the PC business was. P Kahn, the leading sumo wrestler of the day, in my opinion, a very dark spirit, had come to my little land. And the rest of the negative energy was sure to follow. And so it did. When I saw the writing; that Apple was tilting the table in favor of the negativism, I sold out to one of the PC software companies.
  They didn't want my love, particularly, they wanted the big guns of the PC software business. Big guns. A battleground!
  Eventually you end up being like America's southern region. Mired in grief, wringing your hands, not knowing which way to turn. Apple couldn't muster the courage to secede from the PC software business. A war! Hmmm. Could they have won it? Yes! Did they have the will to win? No.
  Waste. Reconstruction. Grief. Nowhere to go.
  You could see it coming, as early as the late 80s.
***Web Energy
  The energy that's feeding the growth of the web may be an illusion.
  It requires courage and committment to make something happen. You have to be different to achieve the next level of success. Business as usual won't cut it.
  In the Mac world -- the winning formula was to erect barriers that would make the Mac software business unpalatable to PC software developers. To allow a new sheltered industry to develop, that wouldn't inherit the mistakes of the previous iteration.
  Same thing happening here in webland.
  We're being asked to inherit the limits of broadcast media. (It's actually worse than that.)
  If we want "web energy" to persist, we have to reject those limits.
  Being angry isn't going to make our rejection heard.
  Being serious about it will.
***Mail to Marc
  Yesterday I wrote an email to Marc Andreessen asking for his personal support for the 24 Hours project.
  Here's what I asked: "Marc, you're a young man, with your whole professional life in front of you. What hopes do you have for the Internet? What difference will it make for your generation? I hope this doesn't sound condescending or disrespectful. I'm a generation older than you, and I want to hear that your generation is idealistic about the future. That it's not just about technology, it's about people."
  This message is for you too. We're at the same crossroads for the Internet industry that we were at in the Mac business in the late 80s.
  Apple didn't have what it takes to get to the next level.
  Does the Internet industry have what it takes?
***Visualize This
  Here's a visualization.
  Imagine you have a baby.
  You love this child with your entire being. Nothing matters but the safety of the child. You would protect the child with your life if it came down to that.
  Along comes a tired old man. He's rich.
  He threatens you.
  "I want that baby!" he says.
  You say no. Of course.
  Along comes the mayor of your town. In public he says he hates the old man. But he's scared of him. All that money and power! If he gets mad, there's no way the mayor will get re-elected.
  The mayor shrugs his shoulders.
  "What can I do?" the mayor says.
  You appeal to the city council.
  "What can we do?" they say.
  They pass a law making it illegal to say no to the old man.
  What do you do?
  What do you do?
***Are we going to lose this one?
  The old man is the Christian voting block in the US.
  The baby is web energy.
  The force is fear.
  What do you do?
  The war may be over.
  Welcome to Reconstruction!
  It's time to dust off your history books folks.
  We're about to learn the same old lesson.
  Again!
***A gorgeous essay
  Last night I dusted off some old scripts and went on a tour of the sites that are supporting the 24 Hours project.
  The most beautiful site is simply titled For Emma.
  White background. A soulful black and white photo of a gorgeous 1.5 year old girl radiating huge amounts of web energy.
  That must be Emma!
  Here's what her Dad says: "I had a part in bringing you into this world. I'll make sure they don't strip you of your freedoms before you have a chance and the right to fight for them yourself."
  Thank you for giving me the precise reason why we're doing what we're doing right now.
  Steve, you're Emma's daddy.
  I'm her friend.
  Dave Winer
  PS: Apple announced today that Motorola licensed the Mac OS. Right on!