Regarding the UK Register's Otto Z. Stern

May 13, 2005 - 2:48pm

Over the course of the last month, I've had the unique privilege of making enemies with Otto Z. Stern, a columnist from the UK Register.

Stern once noted to his readers, “Your precious letters kept me from the brink of total disaster - that being the moment when I call my mother Greta to hear how superior I am than the rest of you in most ways. Okay, every way.”  How sweet of Otto to let us know how much he appreciates us… Since I’m bored, I’ve decided Otto Z. Stern deserves his own blog post here.

Stern is quite an interesting character. According to his blurb at the register, he lives in a solar powered compound in the Great American South West and is the director of “The Institute of Technological Values” - a think tank dedicated to the advancement of morality in our digital age. Of course, that’s all bullshit. Stern actually lives in Chicago, and his institute is nothing more than very funny satirical joke.  Most people are too dense to get it…

Anyhow, my conflict with the distinguished Dr. Stern[2] began a month ago when I wrote a blog post that was critical of one of his colleagues, Ashlee Vance. At the time, I was covering SXSW as the only blogger with press credentials (which basically just meant that strangers would occasionally see that I was wearing a press badge and decide they needed to sell themselves to me… and what else… oh, I got free coffee, and donuts too…)

Anyhow, Vance’s piece, “Bloggers invade Austin music fest” was just too easy of a target. The end product, was, of course, anything but restrained:

… beyond the fact that Vance's article was published 2 days before SXSW even began; beyond her misunderstanding of SXSW that was revealed in his headline, "Bloggers invade Austin music fest" (SXSW consists of music, film, and tech... she makes it sound like we insisted that concerts stop so we could have our chat about blogging!); beyond all of that... I found her standpoint naive, snotty, and totally unwarranted... [1]

Several weeks after publishing the article, Stern shows up and snaps, “Ashlee Vance is actually a really well known writer, and The Register is top class. Think I'll believe her over you (emphasis added).” Now, believe it or not, that was actually very funny. Ashlee Vance is a man – which is a pretty serious error on my part. However, Otto, ever so sly, decided to reinforce that error. (perhaps the reader understands why Stern’s institute is so funny now…)

So Stern seems like a guy with a good sense of humor, so I’m going to attempt a little joke here. By publishing this post, I’m virtually guaranteed to snag the first search result for his name (Google loves this blog). Not to mention, Stern has always entered the page in question through a vanity search, so we can expect him to drop by this post in a matter of days. Hopefully, his response will be a little better than his last one, “…you strike me as a globule of the worst sort who thinks having an online diary will save him from hell.”  That’s such a weak insult, Otto.  really…. In contrast, having this little blog post rated as the most relevant source of information about you is a far more effective insult. “It keeps giving…”, as they say.

Note:

  1. I made a couple of edits to those excerpts.
  2. I decided that Stern deserves an honorary doctorate for his work at the Institute of Technological Values.