Dave Winer is a musician. Sure, he sings. But I’m using the term musician because it’s the best way I can find to describe how his words resonate and inspire. Like any musician – or any blogger or creative human being – he has his hit singles and his B-sides. This mp3 he made for the Pisa conference today is a rocker. It’s an instant classic. It’s a tune I’d be happy to play over and over until the ears ring. It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. As all great hits do, it ends with the best part of the song, something to hum long after the music has ended. Here are some quotes I took with pencil and pad while listening (please correct me if I am wrong).
…all aspects of what we do are being driven away from centralization…[snip] everybody’s equally empowered to be creative…[snip]…Maybe we’re going back to the way things were before they were centralized. [snip] We all had to provide our own entertainment….[snip]…and didn’t we lose something when we all stopped being creative and we all started thinking you had to be somebody special, somebody extremely talented, or extremely beautiful in order to have the joy of being creative. And yeah, I think we did lose something. And I think we desperately need to get back to being creative because our world has problems that can only be solved by creativity and they need to be solved by all of us.
Dave’s passion to empower everyone to be creative, reminded me of the dialogue Doc and I had last week (Doc’s piece for Linuxjournal, my response, then Doc) and other conversations that came from his piece on the flat world. Belief in the bell curve logically leads to the conclusion that only the elite may create. Forget it, say the statistics: you’ll never make it. You’re not special enough. Just follow the factory, march with the masses, fit in with conformity. However, as Doc has mentioned in previous posts, blogging allows us to be ourselves. What I love about blogging is that it isn’t school. Instead it’s a great way to discover how the long, flat tail features plenty of original and brilliant individuals. Forget the bell curve and the mistaken conclusion that we have to be super-special to succeed, or even try. As Doc has said, we are all special: Let me add a term so syrupy I can’t believe I’m writing it: we are all also special. Meaning: all of us are valuable. All of us have something to contribute. Somewhere, somehow. Based on this podcast, I think Dave agrees. Imagine everyone empowered to create and share with each other: what potential!
This is the era of ordinary art, to quote Evelyn Rodriguez. This era of ordinary art is extraordinary, and exciting, as Dave described it. I’m grateful and I can’t wait to see what will come next… or at least what song Dave will sing on his next release 
.