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April 22, 2009
Our open social future
When I started this blog in late 2004, it was a way to make me feel alive and productive. An interesting Slashdotting followed, and a few entries about a boring cellphone driver program that I made attracted hundreds of user comments, mostly reporting straight from the dumps of human intellect. A Scottish sports club that I am a member of soon gave me the semi-official nick-name "World", following this blog's name.
235 entries and 800 comments later, the blog now looks neglected. A common phenomenon among blogs: at least I lasted a bit longer than most. Most of the things I have to say turn out to be ones I'd like to communicate to my friends, so they end up on Facebook. Most of the work things (scientific stuff, Aquamacs) rightfully end up in publications or on mailing lists. And sometimes it's better to do the work rather than to talk about it. Finally, a few things are best said anonymously. (And just those things are often better not said at all.)
The lack of control over who I'm talking to here and how this is archived led me to Facebook. However, I feel that the lack of openness and portability, the "lock-in" will ultimately bring me back to blogging. Perhaps we need a form of "open social network": a multi-function blog/twitter/event organizer/forum with open, public network interfaces and portable databases, installable on central server farms (like Facebook) as well as on private servers (like mine). Can it work? How are those making the software going to benefit from it? The idea is difficult to sell to venture capital firms, so perhaps it is best realized by the free software community. The components are already out there. Lock-in platforms like Facebook aren't the future - they're just the beginning.
Posted by dr at April 22, 2009 3:32 PM