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Echo | Jun 27 2003

As I write this, programmers from around the world are collaboratively developing a new, open source RSS format. What is RSS? I don’t totally know, but I’m certain that at least one of those S’s stands for syndication. In any event, my friend Mark Pilgrim is one of the folks involved in this effort, as is Paul Ford. I respect both of these gentlemen immensely, and if they’re involved in something, it must be a cool thing to be involved in.

Wanting to get in on some of this coolness, if only from the sidelines, I have taken to reading comments about it, both on Mark’s site and the site where the collaboration is happening.

Now, although these comments are written with relative clarity, in a language I understand, in regard to a subject I grasp much better than I am letting on to here, most read to me like total gibberish. I recognize the words themselves but can rarely glean what anyone is saying or why they are saying it.

Oddly perhaps, this experience feels remarkably like watching porn on a blocked cable channel. The analogy holds not only because of the flickering fuzziness, but because of those moments, rare and unexpected, when the picture suddenly comes into focus. As you might imagine, I sit up in my chair then, nervously excited. Ah, there is it, I can see it, he’s got his… whoops, gone again.