Reading list
Shortform reading
This is an incomplete list of the shortform reading (and listening and watching) I’ve been doing lately.
Get in, loser, we're doing an old-fashioned conversation-by-blog-post.
The Powerful Density of Hypertextual Writing
What makes this piece so effective is its plain language and its information density. This density is a real strength of hypertext that is often overlooked and taken for granted.
Kottke on the Art and Power of Hypertextual Writing
I don’t really think of writing in hypertext as a special form of writing. It’s just writing. It’s non-hypertext writing that now feels slightly weird to me. Limiting.
An alarmingly concise and very hinged summary of what it was like to build this site from scratch
So now I have this space I built for me. A place I can feel proud of because I made it. A place that represents me and the way I want to present myself to the world.
A place for my voice to shine through. A real home.
#blogging · #digital-sovereignty · #indieweb · #programming · #web
Why Have a Personal Site Instead of Social Media?
Here I get to share my thoughts in a place I control. I get to piss around and add/remove new features & eye candy as I see fit. And on top of all that, I get to have a place on the web that's 100% mine that (hopefully) expresses a bit of my personality too. All of that is extremely difficult on a cookie cutter social media profile.
#blogging · #ownership · #web
Why a personal site rather than social media presence?
Even if you don’t plan to build a full website and start blogging, at least buy a domain, build a page that links to your other online presence. That way you can get started with little work and when you start to get ideas that don’t quite fit into any social platforms you’re in, you have a place to put it – and people you’ve shared your address before already know where to find you.
#blogging · #ownership · #web
Into the Personal-Website-Verse
Now imagine, for a moment, an environment where a decentralized fabric of connected personal sites allows everyone to publish their own content but also enables each individual to engage in an open discussion – answering, challenging, and acknowledging the ideas of others through this universe of personal sites.As idealistic as this vision of the Web might seem these days, it isn’t that far out of reach.
I Paid $365.63 to Replace 404 Media With AI
What I learned from this experiment is that flooding the internet with an infinite amount of what could pass for journalism is cheap and even easier than I imagined, as long as I didn’t respect the craft, my audience, or myself. I also learned that while AI has made all of this much easier, faster, and better, the advent of generative AI did not invent this practice—it’s simply adding to a vast infrastructure of tools and services built by companies like WordPress, Fiverr, and Google designed to convert clicks to dollars at the expense of quality journalism and information, polluting the internet we all use and live in every day.
The Internet is a Series of Webs
The future core of a internet humane internet, if we are going to be able to use it to do the essential work of surviving this century, is a series of linked routes that stick us all together and supports our communities.
This is what the internet needs to accomplish. How to we make that happen? How do we improve not just our telecommunication platform but leverage it towards a better world for all participants?