I was speaking with a very nice young woman today. She's taking a "webmaster certification" course at BU. I have to laugh at the thought of a webmaster certification course. It sounds kind of like a dungeonmaster certification course. And what, exactly, does one learn in a webmaster certification course? Okay, I can see HTML, Photoshop, Javascript. But a course in FTP? And how exactly do they teach the insouciant spirit of free enterprise, teaching yourself, and bucking convention?

How exactly do they teach taste?

Then again, who said you had to have taste to publish a web page?

To tell you the truth, this whole barrier-to-entry thing is rather frightening. Before you know it, every Tom, Dick, and Harry (not to mention Teresa, Donna, and Harriet) isn't going to be able to make a living as a "freelance web designer" anymore. They're going to have to get certified and licensed and stamped and plasticized.

I think I'm getting jaded.

The other thing this young woman said was that she's come around to Photoshop. She used to be against manipulation of images, but now that she's seen all the cool things Photoshop can do, she's changed her mind.

It took me a minute to figure out what she meant when she said she'd "come around." In another lifetime, I used to have that same disdain for the technological ability to change reality.

Now, I just want to figure out how I can do cool stuff like that.