Amazingly, Dave Winer and Doc Searls remain on the bleeding edge of blogging technology. They are now openly discussing it in their Dave & Doc Voicemail Podcast. Find it in recent days of Dave’s blog. They are thinking far in advance of anything Manton et al are fiddling with.
@Ron Some people are good at thinking ahead, whilst others are good at making things that people can use. There's plenty of room for both types to help us get away from the silos of the social web.
@simonwoods That's right, but I'm not encouraged by the actual numbers, with the silos continuing to grow in strength. I agree with the goal of converting silos to the open web, but I don't see much actual progress in that regard.
@Ron Yep, I go through the same feeling of discouragement. Fortunately I'm yet to be in a position wherein I'm forced to choose the silos for much of anything and just hope that we can increasingly make this a reality for everybody else. My guess is that a lot of good work will happen without much mainstream approval but that seems to be the way of it with our species as a whole.
@simonwoods "A lot of good work . . . without much mainstream approval" is a good description of the work both you and @miraz have chosen to provide here for a very long time. It is individual efforts like this that matter and I think Manton would be smart to acknowledge your work more and flow more power to you than I see him doing. But it is common for people as valuable as you both are to just do your work, without needing or expecting much acknowledgment from others.
For years I helped in my own way in the Bob Dylan community, much of it in one group on FB. I think Dave Winer has a more realistic view of the value of some FB activities than the shunning/ignoring approach that some take in the Indieweb world toward all things about FB. I don't see any advantage to the Indieweb in holding on to such an approach.
Some friends I made in the Dylan community will always be some of my most important friends in life. I've never seen any value in or need to walk away from those people because of the corner of the digital world where they choose to gather. They are doing important work and I honor and respect them, and thank them for doing it.
@Ron thanks for the heads up, was a little bit of a pain to get to the audio files, but am managing to follow along, excellent stuff. I met Doc once (at a future of text conference) I happened to sit next to him, he is such a great thinker and all round generous nice person
@Ron Ah you're too kind again! It is the support of folks such as yourself that makes it all possible, especially in the long term.
As a quick note (since I have been shamefully late in replying to your fantastic email), the MB team have been truly supportive in a substantial form without which I could not continue to work on TIL. I'm hopeful even more can be done this year, even beyond MB and into more of the open web which I think we both agree needs to become much friendlier to the average citizen of the web.
FC is such a complicated matter to think about, although of course it is with such an unbelievable number of people using it on a regular basis. It's just like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon in that way. However, I think you've hit the nail square on the head; in the end life is about people, about who you choose to spend your time with and we should never forget that even when we have the best intentions for attempting to improve our environment.
