William Gibson comments about his own blog’s message board: “…while I’ve sometimes been tempted to comment on more threads more directly, I continue to think that that would turn into exactly the sort of tar-baby timesink that keeps books unwritten, so I don’t. It’s really all about *you*, a conglommerate of mediated selves in your own right. Is it a Relevant Experiment? You decide.“

Gibson captures in a nutshell why communities around an Entity—whether an author, a cartoonist, or a software company—are only as strong as (a) their participants and heavy posters, and (b) their subjects’ capability for staying out of the way.

MacNN: Apple to open Richmond, VA store on Sept 4. This is really good news for my favorite sister, not least of which because she now has my old Pismo. The 500 MHz G3 PowerBook with 512 MB RAM and a 30 GB hard drive survived two years of business school, and is now poised for four years of hard work banging out sermons and theological papers as Esta works through her grad school program at Union. I think that’s a good retirement for the machine—serving the cause of good, instead of business as usual.

Jim writes from North Woodstock, New Hampshire, coming closer to the end of his through-hike of the Appalachian Trail: “It was a fortuitous time to receive my winter gear! Two nights ago, in a shelter, the temperature seems to have dipped below 40 (F), and it promises to get colder as we get higher. Mount Washington, the third highest peak on the east coast and the last time we’ll be above 6,000 feet above sea level, had recorded the highest wind speed on earth (231 mph) until two years ago, when Antarctica topped that.”

My heartfelt condolences to Doc Searls on the loss of his mother. From what he’s been writing about her, she sounds like she was a heckuva lady. But then, what can you expect for someone with connections in both the Jersey Shore and North Carolina?