Rodent Regatta

It’s a cute, and all-too-common tactic to say that people who don’t get it are dumb. I’m not dumb, but RDF makes me feel that way.

from The Truth About RDF by Dave Winer

Thanks, Dave. On a cold Saturday morning in November, even HTML makes me feel dumb. I’m not. All this web development that all of these programmers (yes, if you handcode HTML you’re a programmer in my lexicon) have been doing for years blinds them to the ”ignorance” of a novice. Sometimes the experts’ answers to the novices’ questions zoom far overhead leaving a puzzled stare.

I’ve been using the Internet since the early 90’s. I toyed with the web from about 1995 through about 1997. Then, we began to advise companies on ways to build web technology into their strategies for working with their customers. We didn’t do HTML coding.

Here it is 2002 and I’m neck-deep in trying to learn what a tag is and what an attribute that goes with that tag does. I feel dumb. I’m not. There, I feel better – and I will for at least 10 minutes.