Yes, Virginia, Blogging Can Actually Kill You

After the sudden and unexplained recent deaths of two prominent Bloggers, The New York Times has revisited the "Can Blogging Kill You" issue, and the equivocal answer appears to be "yes" (the newspaper first raised the issue in January, after the much-publicized heart attack of GigaOm's Om Malik). The Times takes an unusual slant to the story in its follow-up, framing the new class of information worker as a post-industrial equivalent of uninsured, unhealthy piecework labor, in other words, as something we used to call a state of "Netslavery."

Steve Gilliard Memorialized in New York Times Magazine

The New York Times issued its annual end of year issue giving tribute to remarkable people who passed in 2007. I'm glad that it chose to honor Steve Gilliard in this section, and Matt Bai, who wrote the article on Steve (entitled "Invisible Blogger") did an excellent job summing up his life and work. I was very lucky to know Steve and serve as his editor when he discovered his talent for "incendiary oration." While Netslaves.com is no more I've archived many of his seminal articles on Ghost Sites, you can read them here.

I was especially pleased that Mr. Bei quoted an article by Steve that I restored to the Web shortly after Steve's passing; you can read the full text of this article, titled "Let's Talk About Geeks," here.