Jonas Luster really broke down how silly the whole thing was and really touched a nerve with Dave. As one might expect, Dave’s little friends came rushing to his defense.

When it comes to innovation, there are only two options: do it first or do it better.

What Dave likes to do, is take an idea that has already been pretty well developed, and then toss a crappy implementation around it and promote the hell out of -himself- it. This pretty accurately describes his role in blogging, RSS, outlining, real-time status updates, vlogging, and pretty much any other technology he insinuates (or allows others to insinuate) that he came up with.

Dave’s “influence” on technology is largely myth. His influence on people who write about technology, though, is real.

Take one of the quotes Mr. Carpenter used to try to illustrate his piece (emphasis mine):

[The instant outliner] connects IM, weblog publishing (a weblog is essentially a published outline), RSS (if RSS items are brought into the outline), and outlining in a new way that radically improves team productivity.

Listen, a weblog is not “essentially a published outline”. Using an outliner to publish a weblog is a cute little hack, but the “essence” of blogging looks nothing like an outline, if we’re going to be honest with ourselves.

I have no doubt that Dave will continue to do things second (or third, or fourth) and pimp the hell out of them, finding meaning and inspiring qualities where none actually exist. That’s just “how he do”. It’s his shtick.