An Interview with the founders of Word Pirates
David Weinberger and Dan Gillmor are interviewed at Connected at Corante on their new Word Pirates site:
Q: What was the impetus behind this site?DW: Dan Gillmor and I were having dinner (at a blogging conference, of course), griping about how we lost the battle once the phrase "intellectual property" and "piracy" entered the common parlance. Before I knew it, Dan had fashioned a pirate's cap out of a napkin and was brandishing a baguette as a makeshift cutlass. Or something like that.
DG: Actually, I couldn't make a pirate's hat out of a napkin if my career depended on it. I guess it's possible that I waved a baguette, even though I've been on a low-carb diet for a while. But I like the story.
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Q:Is this meant to be a "People's Version" of William Safire's column "On Language" in The New York Times Magazine? Will William Safire have to hang up his hat?
DW: Safire, when he isn't fulminating rightly, covers a lot more linguistic territory, as does Barbara Wallraff in The Atlantic Monthly. But there's lots of room for this enterprise. At least, that's what we're maintaining until Dan and I take the site through its IPO and we buy Safire and Wallraff's asses.
DG: If you're really nice to us in this article, we'll give you some pre-IPO shares