You might remember him as an aspiring child author in Stand By Me, but Wil Wheaton has become more than just a has-been child actor. Now, he’s a real-life author both in the blogosphere and in print. After an adolescence in Hollywood—where he became best-known for his role on Star Trek: The Next Generation—Mr. Wheaton laid low for several years. Today, with his web site and blog (www.wilwheaton.net), he’s a vocal proponent of open-source technology, free speech on the web, and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. Think of him as a combination Michael Moore and Garrison Keillor of all things Internet.
HollywoodHe gives readings, speeches, and spoken-word performances at tech confabs like MacWorld and Gnomedex; but for a bout with mononucleosis, he would have appeared at the Red Hat conference in June. At press time, his web site was No. 15 on Technorati’s top 100 blogs list, with 5,573 visitors logged on at once.
Red HatMr. Wheaton reappeared on the web after several years out of the limelight. Legend has it that he was spurred into action when a Hooters waitress said he “used to be an actor.” The self-professed geek says he never outgrew a childhood fascination with computers. When blogs first appeared on the ether, he was quick to jump in. His first Internet page in 2001 was, in his own words, “the lamest web site ever, almost as bad as Homer Simpson’s.” But he soon got the hang of it and started writing. And writing.
Mr. Wheaton found a passion for recording everyday life as well as somber epiphanies. He parlayed that into a blog and self-designed site, the early results of which became two books— Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek, which in part deal with the “joys of HTML, blogging, Linux, and web design.”
Just a GeekWhile recently navigating the Los Angeles freeway, Mr. Wheaton spoke with Red Herring about the evolution of blogs and their potential to transform today’s media.
Los AngelesQ: Are you on a speaker phone? Don’t want you to get into an accident.
A: [Expletive.] No, my phone is like from the 1980s, the size of a shoe. I have a love-hate relationship with technology.
Q: So what is your opinion about blogs becoming a new marketing tool for companies? And I’m not just talking about lame celebrity sites like the kind you make fun of.
A: I’ve actually made a conscious effort not to use the blog as a marketing tool. I’ve found that people who read blogs are pretty insightful. I’ve never met someone who was real excited about target marketing.
Q: Why do you think your site has become so popular?
A: Cory Doctorow [a science fiction author and outreach coordinator of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation] once made an interesting point: Books like The DaVinci Code aren’t extraordinary best-sellers because publishers threw money at it to promote it. It was because of word-of-mouth. With my blog, a community has definitely formed. I just try to write about being a 32-year-old guy trying to do the right thing.
The DaVinci CodeQ: How do you think blogging has changed journalism, and do you think web writers count as journalists?
A: They remove gatekeeping from traditional media. A real journalist tries to get to the truth. That’s different from a columnist, who tells a story and has an opinion. I think the line between journalism and entertainment was obliterated by 24-hour news, long before bloggers [proliferated]. Anything that threatens the status quo gets the attention of the people in power.
Q: Can blogs be used for political change, or are they just places for people to rant?
A: Because weblogs are so decentralized, they have the same affect that pamphlets did at the time of Thomas Paine and Common Sense.
Common SenseQ: Or that fanzines did in the early 1990s?
A: But if you were in Boston and you made a super-cool zine about the Pixies, if I lived in L.A. I would have had to work real hard to find it. These days, you can find a super-cool blog [about a band] online. And, I could tell a friend, who could tell a friend, who could see them play in Chicago and post pictures on the web.
BostonChicagoQ: Did you imagine that the web could give you the opportunity to be a published writer?
A: It gives creative people a chance to bypass the traditional publishing structure. My first book, I was able to publish it online, and discover people who cared about it. You don’t have to worry about selling 50 units in
Peoria and 50 units in
Fort Lauderdale.