Bistrosavage's photostream  

My friend Michael Hart passed away Sept. 6. He is the inventor of the e-book and founder of Project Gutenberg.

Michael was living proof that a single person can change the world through an act of creation. While most people try to attain greatness by attaching themselves to big existent enterprises, Michael understood that the best path to greatness is by giving. And he gave more than anyone else I have ever met. His legacy, Project Gutenberg, is proof of the power of an idea, and of the ideal that information should be free.

If you have a truly great original idea and you work diligently for years on developing the idea, there is little that can stop it. This is the path that great people follow. It is the difficult road.

I took this picture when during Aug. 2010. I moved away from Champaign in 2002, and since then whenever I visited Champaign, I always tried to visit Michael.

When I lived there, Michael and I used to go garage sailing together on Saturdays. I would wake up very early (usually before 7 am), drive to Michael's house, hand him my car keys (I was often too tired to drive at that ungodly hour) and we would go to garage/yard sales all day. Some days we put 60-70 miles on my car. We had long enjoyable conversations and I learned many things from Michael.

He was a dear friend and I miss him.