Read about an old acquaintance in a best seller!

For nearly a decade, I was a part of the underground party movement or rave scene in the Bay Area. This phenomenon attracted all sorts of people to it, some of whom were pioneers in the tech industry in Silicon Valley. Since hard science is intimidating to me, not to mention the whole world of computer science and the tech world it's built on, I didn't discuss such subjects with some of my friends and acquaintances because it would just blow over my head. But to get to know some of their histories n stories would have been quite interesting, indeed. I'm just so shy most times and breaking the ice with people isn't the easiest thing for me to do.

With that said, I've been reading a book called The World is Flat, by Pulitzer Prize winning NYTimes columnist Tom Friedman. The book is basically about "the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. " He goes into detail about how this has changed the planet.

Anyway, I was reading chapter 2, The Ten Forces that Flattened the World and am on Flattener #4, Open Sourcing -- Self-Organizing Collaborative Communities and suddenly I'm reading about a person I know!!!! I've got one of his mixed CDs in my techno collection that he gave to me! It turns out that B.B. not only began the rave mailing list I was on in my college years, which I already knew about, but he also began and perfected the most widely used open sourced web server software in existance. I mean, how cool is that! Tom Friendman was interviewing B.B. about his childhood and how he came into computer programming and things, and it was so interesting to read about. That's what made me feel kind of sad, that I had to learn more about B.B. through a nationally bestselling book available to everyone, and I had the opportunity to talk to this fascinating person on many numerous occasions and also, of course, on that mailing list I was on.

Every person is interesting, in my opinion. Everybody has a history and a story to tell and most are happy to share it with anybody willing to listen. I just need to work on my conversation skills.