Martin Gordon's Blog

Josh Petersen discusses some interesting connections he has drawn between Ben Franklin and the Web today. He calls Ben Franklin the "prototypical" blogger, saying that Franklin, "he was a self-publisher, he remixed content, he wrote it himself, sampled it from other papers, republished it, built out his own distribution network."

According to Josh, if you were looking for a modern day Franklin, look no further than Robert Scoble and Lawrence Lessig, or a combination of the two.

Josh also tells a short story about Ben Franklin that I thought was pretty funny and says a lot about the city of Philadelphia. Someone had suggested to Franklin that he set up a fund for a few hundred years with the proceeds going to the city of Philadelphia. He did just that, setting up a £1,000 fund for both Boston and Philadelphia for 200 years. When the Boston fund was cashed out, it was worth $5 million. According to Josh, "the Philadelphia one didn't do as well." That sure says a lot about the quality city Philadelphia has become.

I'm not even a quarter of the way through the talk, but I just thought these few points were worth mentioning.

UPDATE:
The word "amateur" comes from the word "amare", which is Latin for "love." An amateur does things because he loves what he does, not because of monetary gain.

(via Signal vs. Noise)

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, Ben Franklin, Philadelphia, Robert Scoble, Lawrence Lessig, blogging, Internet, Idea Day