LIKE SEVERAL of my friends, I wonder where to find engaging conversations if I don’t use Facebook. I’m looking at six of the newsfeeds that capture my attention.
Sometime in 2000, I started reading Gavin’s Blog as his musing percolated through Radio Userland alongside Karlin Lillington’s. A few days ago, Gavin wondered if it is time for him to abandon Facebook, the place where all your connections (and the connections of your connections) are easily hovered up and sold along to companies specializing in advancing special messages.
So I clicked into Gavinsblog to see if he reignited conversation there. His last blog post is eight months old and dives deep into forecasting. Gavin has refined his skills as a Master of Free Information, unfurling stories with The Story. I wonder where Gavin will share ideas if he drops off the Facebook.
I see Facebook posts from Euan Semple bubbling up on Facebook and Medium, but I’m happy to see Euan’s thoughts appear inside InoReader, the feed reader I’ve used since Google Reader shuttered.
Dave Winer, one of the primary architects of the electronic plumbing that provides the foundation of connected social conversations online, suggests there is an asymmetric war on-going. The asymmetry is more about the distortion of attention now possible through the method information pushes out into the public consciousness. When I read Dave’s piece, I thought how much the primary social networks now control our information flow. We now longer depend on standard journalism to get our news. Instead, news finds us inside places where we swipe, scroll, and tap.
Neville Hobson, the communicator who brings me Hobson’s Choice on Flipboard, has given me the inside story of communications since I started listening to For Immediate Release in 2005. I occasionally see Neville sharing deep insights on LinkedIn but I prefer his measured audio observations.
More than any other fading pulse point on my on formation diet, I’m longing for more by Dervala Hanley. Dervala downshifted when she moved from New York to California around 10 years ago. Then her blog became a semi-annual publication with the birth of daughter Tara. Dervala shared thoughts about the Wishing Chair in 2018, taking me back to stoop sales and Craigslist in a Brooklyn. I’ve made Dervala’s persona the subject of an essay assignment for Critical and Contextual Studies classes in the Limerick School of Art and Design because there is so much depth to Dervala’s writing.
Catherine Cronin, the educator who inspires my development of Open Education Resources, shares links and conversations on Twitter. I’ve put Catherine on my primary Twitter List so I’m often alerted to what she shares.
I think it’s important to decentralize our information sources and I believe that Web 3.0 will emerge with tools to allow easier federation of information assets following our preferences instead of Facebook’s silo-based architecture. I pay to use InoReader because it alerts me whenever any of the people I’ve cited here create written or YouTube content. I hope to discover someone who is working to deploy methods that allow writers to share and share alike without depending on the over-arching systems from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft. If you have suggestions, could you leave me a comment?
[Bernie @topgold Goldbach teaches creative media for business in the Limerick Institute of Tehcnology. The screenshot is from a March view of his InoReader.]
