aka Ken Smith: The fork

For the web, a fork in the road. Down this way: people who know how to organize companies have a chance to get rich luring people into silos. Down that way: software writers and users who know how to organize themselves and their tools have a chance to work and create in an open place.#

Academics who take an interest in the web tend to think of it in terms of being a public intellectual. Of being a single person speaking from a position of expertise. They like the reach of a popular web voice, if they can get it, but they miss the part about organizing. #

Bannon types know that nothing is easier than drowning out the single voice of a person, public intellectual or otherwise. And the reach and staying power that might be achieved by organizing people together, and using good tools to do so, is not what most academics try for.#

Users who enjoy the open spaces of the web -- that's one thing. Software writers and users who organize themselves and their tools to create and work in the open spaces of the web -- that's another thing entirely.#

Just as academics tend to think the solo public voice is the special thing the web offers them, my hunch is that most users of the web tend to think freedom to read and roam is the special thing that the web offers them. No organization, no affiliation, no chance for power.#

When voices of academics or other web users aren't organized, the masses of information and garbage of the web washes over them, and they become as powerful as they would be if they remained silent. And the powerful love the silence of others.#

People may remember that web links are about organizing information, but we tend not to remember links also open up our chance to organize ourselves.#