Writing quota

“Write something every day.” But why?

I was listening to something yesterday about how we used to think the internet was going to be this amazing, open, global, un-owned place in which everyone could do what they wanted. I think we did use to believe that. These days it’s rather more that we desparately want to settle on a single company’s silo for each feature we want on the internet, and then we’ll stick to that and never have to think of anything new.

But it used to be about being open, sharing what we know, making whatever crazy web tool that seemed like a good idea at the time. More creativity, less commercialisation, and generally shitter visual design.

So: why write something out in the public view? (Not that the public will view it, but that doesn’t matter.) Because in doing so we see each other, and not through the prism of some nob’s company’s idea of how we should present things. It’s the beauty of techno-anarchism, those old-school geeky ideas that very sadly seem to be becoming less and less prevalent as more and more people say “oh, but it’s just easier to use Twitbookgram”. It’s also easier than trying to keep anything private.