Here I collect various writings that I created prior to starting my
blog, along with any longer writings that I might create in the
future:
- Handling Disagreements in Open Collaborative Projects
This article is an outgrowth of my personal experiences as a participant in the Mozilla project working to create policies for the project that are both reasonable in terms of addressing the presumed problem at hand and acceptable to the various people who have a perceived stake in how the problem is addressed. In the course of doing that I evolved my own personal approach to approaching the problem of creating policies in an environment where people might disagree deeply about what such policies should be. …
- What “Sales Engineers” Do
“Sales engineer” (sometimes known as “systems engineer”, or “SE” for short) is one of those unique professions made possible by specialization of labor in an advanced post-industrial economy. Simply put, SEs apply their technical expertise in support of the sale of complex technological products, typically computer hardware, software, and/or services. …
- Personal Internet Access Using SLIP or PPP: How You Use It, How It Works
This document was originally written in November 1994 as a primer for the people I was working with at the National Capital Area Public Access Network (CapAccess), a “community network” providing Internet access via a BBS-like system. It later was included in a couple of early Internet books: …
- Info-Won’ts, or Success for (Computer) Dummies
You don’t hear as much about it lately, but in the early 1990s (this piece was originally written in 1995 and published on the HotWired forums) there was a big controversy over whether inequal access to technology (e.g., home computers, Internet access) would reinforce existing social and economic inequalities, and, if so, what (if anything) government should do about it. …
- The Role of the Reader in Way New Journalism
The folks at Wired magazine (and many others) have pushed the idea (under the buzzphrase “way new” journalism) that digital media will drastically change the way that journalism operates; while I don’t disagree with this in general, I’m skeptical about how far-reaching these changes will be. This piece was written (in early 1995) to express some of my doubts, and was originally published on the HotWired forums: …
- Advice for Community Network System Designers
This is a piece from 1994, before the web took over the world, discussing optimal approaches for people trying to support “community networking” efforts. I didn’t foresee just how much of a big deal the web would turn out to be, but other than that I think I got everything pretty much right: …