My Small Steps Towards A Better Personal Network
It wasn’t always this way.
Web 2.0 came about as the fixed and static content of Web 1.0 gave way to a more collaborative way of working, sharing data between sites, and allowing connections and communities to be built from multiple elements.
The homepage became the blog. While everyone could read the blog in their browser by going to the index page (typically blog/index.htm), other computers could read a blog by going to the RSS file (typically blog/rss.xml). The sharing of data from countless websites to other websites became the norm. Communities could gather together similar sites and topics, merge these RSS files, create new ones, and shape the web to their needs.
RSS is still around, by the way, and still allows for an unimaginable number of services to use it. If you listen to podcasts, then you’ll be using RSS. …Except for Spotify, which, for some reason, refuses to use RSS, leaving you stuck with its proprietary system for following and listening to podcasts. I can’t think why they’ve made it almost impossible to move your podcast listening out of Spotify to another app.
Spotify’s approach to capturing podcast listeners in their closed system is one of the more obvious ways the megacorps capture your conversations, friends, and leisure time. Instead of Web 2.0’s many small elements contributing to the greater good, we now face a handful of tightly controlled checkpoints that will force on you what they want.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been going over what I use, where I spend time, and what feels better, for want of a better phrase, and the options I feel more comfortable with. There’s more to go through but for now…
It’s fair to say I’m no longer active on Twitter, with BlueSky offering a fresh start and a much more ‘for my friends’ style.
I’ve never been one for Instagram, so it’s relatively easy to move (back) to Flickr for hosting and sharing photos. One “Daily Photos” album set up and I’m good to go.
And while I may not post here at a considerable rate, having my blog on its own server, under my control means there’s at least one place that I can safely call my own.
The internet will not be able to go back all the way to Web 2.0 with lots of small personal services connected by free and open standards, but I can look to make my personal network a little bit more resilient with smart choices.
I’d urge you to do the same.
(Photo SXSW Interactive 2012 crowds, Ewan Spence 2012)
