When it comes to technology, social software, the web and education– my professional workspace and content– I feel like I am just beginning to settle down and emerge from what would be the equivalent of my early college years. Some of you may have shared a few years like this, a heady mix of learning, socializing, partying, studying, arguing philosophical and intellectual topics that, at the time, seemed like the most important things in the world. The end of that period is defined by me as the moment when you realize how much you don’t know, how vast the world really is, but face down the potential depression of really grokking what being a lifelong learner means without giving up.

This is a long pre-amble to say that one part of learning is knowing when you are wrong, admitting it, and sharing it with as many people as you shared before. Bloggers often present over an endless series of meals without ever showing the egg on their own faces. So, here’s some of my own: I apologize to Dave Winer for being shallow and dismissive about him and his achievements.

I’ve been wrong about Dave– the public personae, I’ve never met the man in person– and I’ve said things here and to friends that I regret. Perhaps worse, I’ve not processed anything I’ve said with the respect I should have for someone who has undeniably been a pioneer in the technological areas that I believe to be the most important of any such area, not just my profession.

Spend enough time engaged in technologically mediated communication– email, IM, blog comments, forums– and you realize how often it is that people who disagree in that medium can be perfectly comfortable hanging out and talking to one another in a bar or coffee shop. Small differences are magnified, annoyances of communicative style are magnified.

When it comes right down to it, I owe much of my livelihood and the things I am passionate about to Dave and the work he has done in creating and promoting new technologies and approaches to what the Web is and can be. I’m not saying I agree with him all the time– when it comes to specifics of various tech companies, philosophies of information and reading, etc., I disagree with him far more often than not. But he deserves my appreciation and his ideas deserve serious thought and contemplation, not the shallow annoyance and dismissiveness I have expressed in the past. I hope he realizes how important his work has been to progress in the educational sphere. Maybe someday he’ll talk about that and spend some time thinking about it. I’d be honored to do so, but the important thing would be having that conversation get started.

Apologies are often partly for the person doing the apologizing. This one is no different. Dave doesn’t know me, doesn’t read this blog, and except through a few online discussions has never interacted with me… so I have no illusion that he has been losing any sleep over my attitude. But that doesn’t let me off the hook for pettiness or for being intellectually lax and not thinking for myself about Dave and his importance to so many things that are important for me.

For that, Dave, I am sorry. I’m glad you are still pushing things in your own particular way and that you haven’t stopped blogging. Your contributions have been incredible and I look forward to more.