Re: A Chance Encounter with Brad Templeton, of ClariNet

[Brad Templeton <brad@alto.clarinet.com>]

Besides, those of us in the parasitic class sometimes actually do something.
In my case I have a staff of editors who read the news and say, "There's
a story about the internet" and put tags on it which our readers find
useful.   So we are middlemen, but sometimes middlemen do things.

And so they always will.   It is folly to suggest that in the information
marketplace that there will be a direct channel from authors to readers.
Readers want more than what authors produce, and authors are not interested
in "doing it all" to reach the level that readers want.  So somebody will
do this extra work, and they may be paid by authors, or they may be paid
by readers, but they will exist and will be paid.

Until perhaps the day we have AIs to do all that, and that's a long way
away.   We parasites do some surprising things.   I mean all this info
existed before I brought it to the net, but I'm the one who made it come
to the net, and people pay me for doing that.  It was a non-trivial
amount of work, in software and in parasitic deal-making.