Sunday, October 14, 2007

Bye, Brin

I just deleted David Brin's blog from my bookmarks. (Yes, I'm a dinosaur. There's nothing delicious about me.)

I used to be a loyal reader of Brin's blog. He was good at finding an interesting warp that was hard to categorize. I still think that the Transparent Society is one of the most important books of the last ten years.

Best of all, he used to attract a small but active community of commenters with opinions from all over the political spectrum. He was a fine example of that rarest (and apparently only metastable) form of blog: a genuinely balanced forum.

Brin's blog was one of the first places I started commenting. In many ways, it was his blog that finally goaded me into starting my own blog. Now, six months later, here I am with my massive readership of, oh, maybe two on a good day. (Still haven't put up a site meter--it'll just be too depressing.)

When you commented on Brin, you almost always got an answer from somebody. They might easily inform you that you were full of it, but there was hardly ever any personal abuse and the arguments were always cogent.

Brin has been a Bush-hater forever. But lately, he's slowly drifted off into conspiracy theories and repetitive venom-spewing. I'm not sure what changed. One of the things I noticed is that he not only started cross-posting on Kos, but he also become quite keen on boosting his ratings in that forum. Survival in the Kos jungle requires tossing red meat to a particular kind of audience. He did.

I hope he finds his way back. When smart people succumb to blind rage we all ought to worry.

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