Who do you want to meet before you die?

I would be willing to wager that everyone is asked this question at least once during their lifetime. Having been asked several times – and having asked it of myself on more than one occasion – I was intrigued when I ran across The Six Thousand this morning (thanks, BoingBoing!), self-billed as:

6000 intriguing people you want to meet online before you die. Who will make the list tomorrow?

While I obviously recognize the general application of the concept, this is posted in “Nerd Stuff” because, at present, the list is almost entirely populated with people that nerds would want to meet.

On the list, Xeni Jardin, in particular, is one person that I’ve wondered about meeting recently. Two additions that I would like to see to The Six Thousand (disregarding the “online” part of its description) are Stephen Hawking and Jim Gray. Luckily, I was (serendipitously) included in a group discussion with the latter of the two. (Check! Only 5,999 to go!)

Personally, I would probably also have to add Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman, despite their reputation (or at least Stallman’s) as something of an “acquired taste”. I’d better cut it short there, as I could probably continue in this vein all day. So…can you name 6,000 people you want to meet before you die?

Nerd Literature

A friend of mine has had an idea for a fantasy novel (think “Dungeons & Dragons”, not “Fabio & Bodices”), and he recently decided to begin publishing it – one piece at a time – here. Unfortunately, he’s decided to reserve all rights, as opposed to publishing under Creative Commons (or something similar), but it was difficult enough to get him to start blogging so I’ll let it slide. I think it’s fantastic that he’s publishing it online, and I’m excited to see what kind of comments it generates and where it goes from here. As of right now, the prologue is the only thing that’s been posted, but there’s more to come (hopefully soon).

Another interesting example of fiction being posted online in a “bloggy” format is Cory Doctorow‘s new novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Mr. Doctorow has decided to publish the entire novel to teh Intarwebs as an RSS feed under a Creative Commons Developing Nations license. (Actually, I did a bit of poking around and found out that it’s also being released for download in just about every format known to man; more information here). It’s an interesting experiment, and I’d be curious to see statistics on sales vs. downloads, etc., etc.

Both excellent projects; check them out! (And don’t forget to leave Joe some comments!)