The Parts That Were Left
The Parts That Were Left Out of the Weinberger Interview…
In the first posted draft, I had the endorsements and affirmations below larded throughout the text. David found this a less than pleasiing presentation so I’ve moved them here, a more discrete location. I’ll have to admit that the boxed testimonial thing looked a lot like advertising in the weekly shopper throwaway that piles up around my mailbox.
Regardless, a lot of nice people had a lot of nice things to say about David. Here are some of them.
David Weinberger speaks wisely, wittily, humbly, truly on behalf of human interests in technological matters. We should treasure his appreciative and cautious enthusiasm for technological development; only rarely can a regular people find such a combination of a philosophical mind, a generous spirit, a winning prose style, and a determined advocate. - AKMA
“Keenly observant but always approachable, David’s quiet but far-reaching insights into our interaction with our technologies and the world evince a mix of critical acuity and a profound, self-effacing humanity. The upside to everything going down, his gentle humor, love of people, and formidable intellect lend the Web its most valuable attributes: credibility, respectability, and dignity.” - Mike Golby
“Learned, passionate, decent, kind, clever, funny and positive adjective inspiring.” - Gary Turner.
Dr. Weinberger is a helluva writer and a mensch of the first rank. He’s also funny as hell and a great friend. What less can I say? - Doc Searls
David is sneakily genius. You have a conversation with him, and it seems like you’re on equal footing. And then he goes off and writes something like Small Pieces…amazing and poetic. - Evan Williams
“David is wicked smart, as he likes to say of others. And very funny. And a highly compassionate human being. He has also yelled at me so loud I had to hold the telephone away from my ear. Twice he did this. But then, I’ve never had very good luck with best friends.” - Chris Locke
David is able to diffuse the most volatile situations. He’s made me laugh when I was about to scream. Even when he’s being high maintenance, I don’t mind, because he goes about it in a most affable manner.
He’s casually brilliant, which is a rare and lovely quality. - Wendy Koslow
I enjoy David’s embracing of the blog in a context of social systems as well as his trying to explain why the Internet exists etc. I’ve been surprised when doing a search on something I want to comment on only to find David’s been there ahead of me on his blog. Or blogs. - Bob Frankston
One of the reasons I got into blogging was David’s inspiring vision that we were creating something new here and that we were going to have to be a certain way if we wanted it to be a certain way. - Euan Semple
He seems like a man who goes out of his way to be fair. He may not agree with you, but he seems willing to at least listen with an open mind, first, before making a judgment. And unlike so many of the other A-Listers, he acknowledges that you’ve made a statement — that’s a rare trait, and one that should be valued.
And he uses a lot of orange at his site. I like a man who uses orange. - Shelley Powers
David Weinberger is such a painfully excellent writer that I cringe at my own inability to adequately describe how excellent he is. Better yet, he’s a wonderful thinker–and that rarest of A-list weblog writers: kind, and a gentleman. I’ve not witnessed a single Alpha male excess. How could you not love that? - Donna Wentworth
David is, in a word, a wonder. He represents a wholly unique blend of brilliance, compassion, wit, clarity, verbal mastery (in writing and in person)–and not an ounce of bullshit. It’s an honor and a pleasure to know him. - Denise Howell
David Weinberger manages, in ways that defy simple analysis, to be generously incisive, passionately provocative, thoughtfully hilarious and charmingly disarming. While for others self-deprecation can be a masked form of aggression, in David’s hands it becomes a graceful instrument of wit and wide-ranging comment. He should be read at least twice - once for the pared-down elegance of his argument, and again to glimpse the labor that made such seeming simplicity possible. - Tom Matrullo
What I would like to say about David W is that he is a fine intellect who goes out of his way to “keep the faith,” to stay with a conversation, even when he has reason to feel ill-used, and to persist until reason and good humor prevail. - Phil Cubeta