The Best Writing on the Web...According to Me
A long time ago, in the same city I'm living in now, I taught workshops at CSU, Chico for Student Computing. The topics were E-mail, Using the Internet, and Beginning HTML. During the one about the Internet (you see, back in those days there was only one Internet) I would give a super-brief history as well as a bit of my personal opinion on it's strengths and weaknesses.
The best thing about the Internet is that it allows anyone to publish what they want. The worst thing about the Internet is that it allows anyone to publish what they want.
Back in those days USENET was the worlds biggest water cooler. Today it's the plethora of weblogs and "community sites" (think Daily Kos or slashdot). With the increase of publishers the problem of finding "good" writing gets harder. Various "solutions" have popped up to try and deal with this issue. Weblogs have "The A-list" and community sites have karma, rankings, and all kinds of crazy bells and whistles to try and get the cream to rise to the top. Now, while these tactics help, they are not foolproof by any stretch of the imagination and they leave out some really great writing. Alas, no scheme that deals with subjective rankings can ever be "perfect."
My friend Greg and I often muse about what we read on the internets (kids today and all their internets, they don't know how good they have it). From time to time I will get notes from Greg that are so brilliantly succinct that I feel they must be shared.
For my money, there's only two tech pundits worth reading today. I hesitate to even use the word pundit in relationship to what these guys do because it diminishes their output. These guys are hardcore analysts baby!
Greg is referring to John Gruber and John Siracusa of Daring Fireball and Ars Technica, respectively.
Both have a Mac bent certainly, especially Gruber. However they branch out into non Mac topics. Regardless of the subject matter, just enjoying these guys really take apart a subject is educational.
Educational. To me, that is the whole point of the internets. That they do it in an entertaining way is icing on the cake. I would also add Whiskey Bar to this list. When I read a post there I learn about history, politics, and economics -- typically all at the same time.
All of them make me want to be a better writer. Of course I will not get better without practicing, no matter how much I read.
