I dream of a web that’s small and strange and wonderful. Where personal websites grow like gardens – each one unique, crafted by hand, reflecting the beautiful weirdness of its creator. Where the web feels big because it’s made of small, individual voices.
I dream of a web where people own their words. Where our thoughts live on our own property, not rented from a company that can disappear voices on a whim. Where writing exists because you have something to say, not because the appetite of the algorithm demands it.
I dream of a web where linking is loving. Where hyperlinks have power, where blogrolls make comebacks, where discovery happens through human curation rather than manipulation by machines. Where following a thread of links can lead down rabbit holes of genuine fascination.
I dream of a web that respects our attention. Where websites load quickly because they’re not bloated with tracking scripts and surveillance infrastructure. Where reading an article doesn’t trigger an onslaught of analytics events and cookie consent banners. Where the interface serves the content, not the advertiser.
I dream of a web that’s accessible to everyone – not just those who can afford the latest devices or fastest connections. Where sites work on old phones and slow networks because the creators remembered that the web is for everyone, not just the privileged.
I dream of a web where communities form around shared interests rather than shared platforms. Where discussions thrive, where posts feel like letters from friends, where feeds let you choose your own reading rhythm instead of surrendering to an infinite scroll.
I dream of a web that’s built by humans for humans. Where the goal isn’t to automate away human expression through artificial intelligence, but to amplify the unique perspectives that only humans can offer.
I dream of a web that moves at human speed. Where conversations unfold over days and weeks instead of milliseconds. Where depth matters more than virality, and reflection is worth more than reaction. Where you can disappear for a month and come back to find your community still there, still talking, still caring.
I dream of a web where silence is golden. Where not every moment needs to be documented, shared, or optimized for engagement. Where digital sabbaths are respected, where being offline isn’t a productivity failure, where the most profound connections happen when the screens are dark.
I dream of a web that doesn’t just connect our devices, but connects our souls. That doesn’t just transfer data, but transfers meaning.
What returned: a sense of calm. I could go to sleep without being scored. I could go for a walk without a badge. I started noticing things again - how I feel after coffee, the way my breath slows near water.
She’s a much more eloquent writer than I am, but her thoughts are very similar to mine on the topic of quantified self.
For those curious, I’m rocking a Timex Expedition these days and not looking back.
With respect and syrup, this dude hacked the Waffle House website as a hurricane barreled toward his home in Florida:
The Waffle House Index is an (incredibly) unofficial tool used by FEMA to gauge the severity of natural disasters. Why Waffle House? Because they’re infamous for not closing even during the worst of storms. If the House is closed, that means things are getting real. The problem with the Waffle House Index is that there’s not really an actual “index” you can check.
What a great story! And great to hear Waffle House was (somewhat) cool about the whole thing.
Pittsburgh-based nonprofit news outlet PublicSource is experimenting with a new printed edition, although not the typical format for which legacy media is known. Taking a page from the underground publishing playbook, PublicSource is releasing neighborhood-focused zines intended to meet communities where they are – at coffee shops, community centers, their neighbor’s home – and create a hyperlocal publication with impact.
Zines are independently published, noncommercial publications that are often handmade and focus on very specific subject matter. They carry a storied history, with some scholars tracing zine lineage back to Thomas Paine’s political pamphlet Common Sense in 1776. The modern era of zine culture in the U.S. was ushered in during the late-19th century’s amateur press movement and carried through the 20th century with help from the Harlem Renaissance, science fiction fandom and punk rock movements.
PublicSource’s foray into zine publication is in the spirit of these previous movements, but also brings with it a reaction to the digiral culture of our day. Halle Stockton on the rationale:
We intentionally chose the zine format: a small, printed publication you can hold, flip through, pass to a friend or tuck into your bag. It’s low-tech and high-touch. It slows you down just a little. It doesn’t ping or scroll. And it doesn’t require an algorithm to find its audience.
There’s something profound in Stockton’s phrase “high-touch.” The tactile experience of paper creates engagement that’s very different from media that’s mediated through a glass screen. The physical act of flipping pages, the inability to hyperlink away to endless distractions, the constraint of finite space – these aren’t limitations. They’re features. They force both writer and reader into a more intentional relationship with the stories.
I think this is an interesting move for a media outlet like PublicSource. Journalism needs to become more local. It needs to connect with people on the issues that directly impact them, their neighbors and their neighborhoods. It’s smart PublicSource considers the zine project to be one element of a broader strategy to “inform and inspire the Pittsburgh region through the power of deep, independent journalism,” because the artisanal nature of the format does raise questions about scalability.
While most of our information these days arrives through algorithmic feeds and endless scroll, there’s something quietly revolutionary about a folded piece of paper that exists entirely outside that system. PublicSource’s zine experiment reminds us that sometimes the most innovative approach is also the most ancient one: putting words on paper and handing them directly to your neighbors.
Whether this model can scale remains to be seen, but perhaps that’s missing the point. Zines were never about scale – they were and continue to be about connection, community, and the radical idea that everyone has a story worth telling. Maybe what modern journalism needs isn’t more reach, but more touch.
Greg Storey on the binary nature of AI discourse these days:
The assumption that tools passively rewire us, no matter our intent, no matter our context, no matter our discipline, is reductive at best and infantilizing at worst.
Worth a read. This is more nuanced than AI is evil / AI is the future.
I fed Claude some examples of bi-weekly stakeholder updates for products I previously managed. I then asked it to learn the format, understand the tone of the writing, and help me draft a first installment for a new initiative I’m leading. We chatted for a few minutes about the voice I desired, recent progress by the team, and the health of the project. After I provided adequate context, Claude generated a draft for me to review. The initial version was very good and only required a few copy and formatting edits. I was happy with the result and it saved me about an hour this morning.
Note: This post is the first in an ongoing series called How I Used AI Today, inspired by friend and former colleague Beck Tench who does something similar over on LinkedIn. I’m starting to believe the thinking and narrative around generative AI is becoming too binary. The intent of this series is to keep me publicly honest and intellectually responsible with my use of this emerging technology.
It pains me The Center for Humane Technology posted this statement in opposition to the state moratorium on AI legislation on their Substack, but it is a good statement, so I’m sharing.
A 10-year moratorium on state action fundamentally misunderstands the speed at which this technology is being developed and deployed, and the ways our governance institutions need to adapt to meet this moment.
Remember where we were just a year ago with respect to AI. A decade-long moratorium on regulating this grift is not only insane, but it’s dangerous for IP, the environment and worker’s rights.
Let’s not let all the good the internet has given us over the years be overshadowed by keyboard warriors with virtual beer muscles who’d never say to our face what they type from behind a screen. There is still positivity online. Find it. Celebrate it. Share it. Let’s be the web we need right now.
The social web is at an inflection point. After years of centralized platforms dominating our digital lives, we’re witnessing a resurgence of alternatives built on open protocols. I believe this is something to celebrate, yet I’ve noticed a recent rift of technologists, developers, and early adopters engaging in debates about which approach is more “pure” or “truly open.”
The Mastodon/ActivityPub camp points to federation and existing implementation. The Bluesky/AT Protocol proponents highlight architectural advantages and planned interoperability. They’re both right and each side has compelling arguments, but they miss a fundamental truth: the web was never meant to be a monoculture.
The early web thrived because it wasn’t beholden to a single implementation or approach. HTTP, HTML, RSS and other foundational web technologies weren’t prescriptive about how they should be implemented. They simply defined interfaces that allowed different systems to communicate. This protocol-first approach created a healthy ecosystem where experimentation was encouraged and diversity was a strength, not a liability.
If today’s web is built in the spirit of the web we were given by its creators, platforms simply shouldn’t matter. Protocols should.
When Tim Berners-Lee gave us the web, he didn’t dictate which software to use or which browser was the “true” implementation. Instead, he offered protocols that allowed for interoperability while encouraging innovation at the edges. The result was a renaissance that transformed human communication. The web we knew and loved.
The challenge we face today isn’t deciding which social platform is more ideologically pure. It’s building systems that return agency, privacy and control to users while maintaining the convenience and network effects that drew people to centralized platforms in the first place.
This isn’t a zero-sum game where one protocol must “win” while others fade away. Let’s take email as an example. Email has thrived for decades with multiple protocols working in concert. Different implementations serve different needs, and the ecosystem is stronger for it.
The real metric of success shouldn’t be which protocol gains dominant market share, but whether users regain control over their digital identities and social connections. Can I own my data? Can I choose which clients I use to access the network? Can I move between providers without losing my social graph? These questions matter far more than whether a particular implementation uses federated servers or a distributed approach.
As someone who’s been thinking about the intersection of technology and human experience for years, I’ve come to believe that technical debates often obscure the more important human questions. In reality normies don’t care whether their social media runs on ActivityPub or AT Protocol — they care about connecting with friends, sharing ideas, and being part of communities.
Perhaps what frustrates me most about the current discourse is how it forces people to choose sides in a battle that shouldn’t exist. The brilliant minds crafting today’s open web are wasting energy fighting each other rather than working together to build alternatives to the centralized offerings from big tech.
What if, instead, we embraced a both/and mindset? What if Mastodon/ActivityPub and Bluesky/AT Protocol were seen as complementary approaches, each with strengths and weaknesses, each contributing to a richer, more resilient social web?
It’s already this way for me. By leveraging the POSSE (Post on your Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere) philosophy via Micro.blog, I am able to post & reply on both Mastodon/Fediverse & Bluesky without ever seeing or touching either platform. Because the underlying protocols for each are well architected and documented, Micro.blog’s creator Manton Reece can build his platform above their protocols. The Ghost blogging platform is heading this direction too. This is the future.
The path forward isn’t choosing between competing visions of openness. It’s embracing the plurality of approaches while insisting on core values of user agency, data ownership, and interoperability. In that spirit, let’s redirect our energy from debating protocols to building the web we want to see — one that’s truly open to everyone, regardless of which particular technical approach gets us there.
AI is a tool, and judgment, for the foreseeable future, remains our job. It doesn’t matter how cool your hammer is, it’s still on you to decide which nails need hammering.
I believe this rationale can be extended beyond AI, to most things in life.
Andy Cush in Hearing Things on quitting artist-abusing platforms like Spotify:
Music just sounds better when you’re not streaming it. Not only because the audio quality is often literally higher, but because you’re forging a connection with what you’re hearing that’s strengthened by your choices.
The best ideation networks are asymmetric. They aren’t little echo chambers. They’re cognitively and temperamentally diverse. They combine the formal and the chaotic. The spreadsheet brain and the poetry brain. The person who reads footnotes and the one who interrupts with metaphors. You want disagreement. You want stakes. You want someone who’s willing to say: this doesn’t hold.
Joan writes the kind of posts where you begin nodding with each new paragraph and by the end you’re saying to yourself: F*ck Yeah. I’m not sure how Joan writes with such volume and consistency, but I’ll take it. I look forward to each new post that hits my RSS feed reader.
Who is this for? You. Yourself. Your family. Your friends. Your friend’s friends. Your neighborhood. And they can have it whenever they want. As a gift. A gift from you to them. Not a gift to be measured in engagement, but instead as a body of work. A gift to the web, which is a gift to people.
This is exactly how I’ve been thinking about my site lately, and one of the reasons I’ve been importing extremely old posts from my previous online spaces into the archive here. For posterity. For legacy. To create a document of a life (hopefully) well lived.
In The Ordinary Sacred, Joan Westenberg examines the alternative to a hyper-connected and ultra-performative lifestyle:
We live under systems—economic, cultural, digital—that demand we strive to be impressive. Inspirational. Aspirational. Permanently visible. Permanently performing. Eternally, achingly unsatisfied. We’re trained to ask, before doing anything: Will this make good content? Will this signal something useful? Will this get me closer to who I’m “supposed” to be?
I feel this sentiment in my bones. In my core. It’s a tension I feel pulling at me in surprising moments. Joan’s piece is a longer read, but worthy and relevant one – for me, and I suppose some of you who think similarly about digital culture.
A thoughtful post (as always) from Naz about the importance of carving out your own digital space:
I don’t need to be in a walled garden but I’d love to have you over at my place.
This sentiment is exactly how I’m feeling these days. Fewer, richer interactions in a space that’s built on my terms. I can shut the door and draw the shades if I need privacy, or leave the door open and roll out the welcome mat if I feel like being social.
Like Naz, I’m really interested to explore the artisanal web and I’d love swing by your place if you’ll have me. I’ll bring baked goods.
The Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council will begin serving AI slop to their patrons via a customer service chatbot and auto-generated events calendar. This is a bad look for an organization whose mission is to grow “a more resourced, connected, and informed arts sector, empowering artists and arts organizations throughout Southwestern PA.”
Fifteen years ago, one of my favorite writers Robin Sloan wrote about the concept of “stock and flow” as they relate to digital media. His metaphor, borrowed from economics, distinguished between the ephemeral stream of updates (flow) and the durable lasting content (stock) that builds value over time. I stumbled upon this post again this week, probably through a bit of Mastodon flow, and reading it among today’s modern context feels both prescient and incomplete – prescient because Sloan astutely identifies the emerging tension between immediate engagement and lasting value, and incomplete in that he couldn’t have predicted how dramatically over the coming decade the pendulum would swing toward flow.
The intervening years have seen the rise and dominance of algorithms, short-form video, and endless streams of ephemeral content. These are the feeds we come to know and love1 . We’ve optimized our digital lives for flow to an extent that would have been hard to imagine in 2010. The “treadmill” Sloan described has become a high-speed conveyor belt, perpetually delivering new content while whisking away anything more than a few hours old.
I’ve noticed something interesting happening, though. As our digital lives have become increasingly dominated by flow, there seems to be a growing hunger for stock – for content with permanence, depth, and lasting value. You can see it. You can feel it. I don’t think it’s just a notion of nostalgia from elder millennials like myself; it’s an emerging & collective awareness that the endless streams often leave us feeling empty and disconnected from what matters. Even my Gen-Z kids tell me this.
In my mind, the open web is the natural home for stock media. While social platforms optimize for ‘engagement’ (read: time spent scrolling) and viral spread, the open IndieWeb creates space for content that develops and appreciates over time. Take this post as an example. It’s referencing a blog post from 15 years ago! When you own your platform, you’re free from the tyranny of flow. Your words can find their audience through myriad entry points, through intentional discovery, through the slow build of genuine connection rather than viral mechanics.
This matters because stock isn’t just about content strategy – it’s about how we think, how we create, and how we build understanding over time. When everything is flow, we lose the ability to develop ideas fully, to let thoughts mature and evolve. We sacrifice depth for immediacy, wisdom for novelty.
The open web provides the much needed infrastructure for digital permanence. Through evergreen protocols like hyperlinks and technologies like RSS, we can create connections between pieces of stock content that grow stronger over time. Unlike social platforms where old content effectively disappears, the open web allows ideas to find new audiences months or years after publication.
Now, we can’t reject flow entirely. As Sloan noted as early as 2010, we need both. But these times call for us to consciously rebalance. We need to recognize that some ideas need time to develop and that some conversations are worth having at a human pace rather than an algorithmic one.
I’ve personally experienced this rebalancing since moving my writing to this self-hosted corner of the internet. Free from the pressure to feed the algorithm, I find myself thinking differently about what I create. I’m more willing to let ideas develop over time, to revisit and refine thoughts, to build a body of work that has coherence and permanence.
The economics of stock and flow have shifted too. While flow still dominates attention economy, I think stock increasingly drives genuine interest and lasting value. In a world of generative AI, thoughtful, accurate, nuanced and human-created stock content has (and will) become more valuable, not less.
I believe we are entering a renaissance of stock media on the open web. As more people grow weary of the endless scroll, I think they’ll seek out spaces for deeper engagement and lasting connection. The infrastructure exists – through the basic building blocks of the open web. What’s needed now is a shift in how we think about creation and consumption.
Sloan was right about the importance of balancing stock and flow. What he couldn’t have predicted was how corporate flow would have evolved over those years. He also couldn’t have predicted how the open web would persist over the decades as a natural home for stock, providing both the technical infrastructure and the cultural space for media that endures.
Super cool! Counterforce has published a punk rock guide to Mastodon & the Fediverse. IMO the Fedi is so tightly aligned to the punk / hardcore / underground ethos and I’m surprised there isn’t more of a punk community established. Maybe this is a start.
We don’t need any more irony-poisoned hot takes or cathartic, irreverent snark. We need to collectively decide what kind of world we actually do want, and what we’re willing to do to achieve it.
This is easier said than done. But it’s the blunt truth, and it needs to be shouted, shared and lived.
Props to the folx over at The Iconfactory on the release of Tapestry, a unified feed reader that brings together open social platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky, with other sources like RSS and YouTube. The concept of a unified reader like this is interesting to me, but after trying Tapestry, I think I want my social feeds quarantined from my blog/website/RSS feeds.
Simply put: I read Mastodon for a completely different reason than I read RSS.
In Mastodon, I want to favorite, boost and reply to friends, learn what they’re up to and what they think about things. This is done in short order. I’m usually in and out quickly, never spending more than a few minutes cruising the feed. When I come upon an interesting link that requires more time and attention to read, I save it for later in my feed reader of choice Reeder.
Conversely, when I open Reeder, it’s usually for a session. I do this once in the morning and once at night. Blog posts and website articles by nature are longer than social posts, so reading RSS is a conscious decision when I have the capacity to dedicate to longer reading. Even thought Reeder has the ability to unite RSS with open social feeds, I do not utilize this feature.
For me, social feeds are for interaction, while RSS feeds are for deep thinking.
Again, kudos to Tapestry and Reeder for experimenting with feed unification. Perhaps as the feature set grows in each app I will consider migrating over, but for now I will keep my feeds separated.
This post is part of the February 2025 Indieweb Carnival, where Joe Crawford invited us to share personal affirmations - the sayings and mantras that help guide our lives.
Be Here Now. Three simple words that have carried me through the darkest valleys and highest peaks, both literally and figuratively. This mantra, popularized by Ram Dass, has been my companion through unthinkable loss, through ultra-distance runs, and increasingly, through our algorithm-infused world.
I first encountered these words during a period of profound grief, when the weight of loss made both past and future unbearable. The past was too painful to revisit, the future too uncertain to contemplate. Be Here Now became my anchor, a reminder that this moment - just this one - was all I needed to handle. It didn’t make the grief disappear, but it made it manageable, one present moment at a time.
Years later, I found myself returning to these words in a different context: ultra-running. When you’re 40 miles into an ultra, your mind becomes your greatest adversary. It wants to complain about every ache, project how much worse they’ll feel in 10 miles, replay every training run you missed, question every life choice that led you here. But none of that serves you. The only thing that matters is this stride, this breath, this moment. Putting one foot in front of the other. Keep moving forward. Be Here Now. The mantra becomes a rhythm, a meditation in motion, carrying you through the pain cave one step at a time.
Lately, I’ve found new meaning in these words as I navigate what the internet has become. The constant pull of notifications, the endless doomscrolling, the quantified metrics of our lives - they all conspire to pull us away from the present moment. They fragment our attention and scatter our consciousness, leaving us somehow both overstimulated and undernourished.
This led me to make significant changes: deleting corporate social media accounts, self-hosting my online presence, removing my fitness tracker after nearly two decades. Each change was a choice to Be Here Now, to experience life directly rather than through the lens of algorithms and analytics.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m sharing these thoughts on a digital platform. But there’s a profound difference between using technology mindfully and letting it use us. The IndieWeb movement itself embodies this distinction - it’s about being present and intentional in our digital lives, rather than passively consuming the algorithmic firehose.
Be Here Now isn’t about rejecting the past or ignoring the future. It’s about recognizing that the present moment is where life actually happens, where we have the power to act, to heal, and to grow. Whether I’m processing grief, pushing through physical or mental limits, or choosing how to engage with technology, these three words remind me to return to the only moment I can truly inhabit.
In a world that increasingly pulls our attention in a thousand directions, being here now is both a challenge and a radical act of self-preservation. It’s an affirmation I return to daily, a compass that always points to this moment, this breath, this now.
I saw this challenge making the rounds last week and thought I’d give it a go. Back in the day, challenges like this were really fun and helped draw connections between interesting corners of the open web. It’s also a productive exercise for me to reflect on blogging as a practice. From what I can discern, we have Ava to thank for kicking this off…so, thanks! Here we go…
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I came of age during the dawn of the internet in the mid-1990s. At that time the web was like the Wild West. There was an energy about it. It was fresh and new and it was bringing people together in meaningful ways. I wanted so badly to understand how it worked, so I dove deep under the hood of my favorite sites to learn how semantic code generated pages.
From that point on I was hooked, and threw myself into creating my first site – on Geocities. Sunset Strip, represent! This was circa 1996 and blogs hadn’t been invented yet, but I did publish my writing on the Geocities site, so I do consider this my first blog.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I currently use Micro.blog to power StaticMade.com. I’m very happy with it and think Manton does a great job developing it.
When I was looking for a platform upon which to relaunch my personal website last year, one of the most important elements for me was to find a platform that embraced the open web. Micro.blog’s simplicity and flexibility, combined with robust feeds integration and on-board syndication to several Fediverse platforms make it the perfect fit for my needs.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Having written on the web since the ’90s, I’ve used my fair share of blogging platforms. To the best of my memory, here they are in chronological order: Geocities, Blogger, Tumblr, Ghost (self-hosted), raw dog HTML files, Ghost (hosted), Micro.blog
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
Most of the time I use the Micro.blog editor, either on my laptop for longer posts like this one, or in the Micro.blog for iOS app on my phone for shorter or image-based posts. Sometimes I get workflow envy when I read about how some folx have sexy workflows that publish static pages, but writing in the browser gets the job done for me quickly and efficiently. These days I don’t have the time to reinvent my publishing workflow process.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
Inspiration comes at the strangest times, doesn’t it? I’ll often see something online – a post or an article – and that can spark the muse. That’s the way this post originated. Other times, posts come from deep reflection about something going on in my life. And yet some other posts are completely spur of the moment. I use those posts as a way to document meaningful or intersting things in real time.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I always tend to post immediately after writing. I’ll read it over a few times, to catch typos and tweak wording, and then tap publish.
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
One of the first posts I published after relaunching this site in August 2024 was Death to the Algorithm. It’s a manifesto of sorts. I think it does a good job summarizing why I do this and why it’s important.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
I’m happy with Micro.blog and I don’t have any plans to migrate elsewhere, but I’m always tweaking things. Most recently I added a ‘Reply via Email’ button to all posts, as well as a cool feature in the footer that displays the song I’m currently listening to. So I’ll probably continue to ship things like that, along with incremental design updates. The web is never finished!
Jared White articulating quite clearly the biggest obstacle facing the Open Web:
…never before has The Indie Web been such a glorious platform for building anything you might dream of and sharing it with anyone you like, yet never before has The Corporate Web been so awful and damaging to the body politic. I wish I knew how to deal with this cognitive dissonance, and how to convey to mere mortals out there that the The Indie Web is alive and kicking, and that The Corporate Web doesn’t have to define their experience of being online.
The Open Web has a messaging and onramp problem. There’s no shortage of brilliant technical and engineering minds working on it, but where are the designers and product strategists who might craft the ‘easy enough’ onramps for those who don’t really give a shit about ActivityPub and just want a healthy, constructive and friendly place to share online? Who is communicating the value of the Open Web in compelling ways and using language non-nerds can comprehend?
The recent growth of Bluesky is proof of a collective appetite for something more. Full disclosure, I don’t think Bluesky is the answer, but they definitely understand the onboarding assignment of making the experience easy without introducing dark patterns (yet).
The foundation for a scalable Open Web is here, thanks to the dedication and great work of the developer community that’s gotten us to this point. But to truly realize the potential and impact a universal open web, we need to augment the engineering focus with two additional legs of the stool: design and product. Only then will we be able to understand the problems and needs of the users who aren’t yet here and build the open, accessible and welcoming web of the future.
In the shifting landscape of our digital commons, the words the leaders of these corporate social platforms use have become shapeshifters, their meanings bending like light through murky water. As we witness the transformation of our shared online spaces, I find myself creating a new dictionary for these times—a translation guide for what remains unsaid.
When they say “free expression,” I want you to hear “the end of community care.”
When they say “algorithmic neutrality,” I want you to hear “the automation of amplified harm.”
When they say “marketplace of ideas,” I want you to hear “a colosseum where truth wrestles with virality.”
When they say “content-neutral platform,” I want you to hear “we’ve chosen profit over protection.”
When they say “open dialogue,” I want you to hear “we’ve removed the guardrails.”
When they say “reduced content moderation,” I want you to hear “we’ve dismissed the digital gardeners.”
When they say “user empowerment,” I want you to hear “you’re on your own now.”
When they say “engagement metrics,” I want you to hear “behavior we can monetize.”
When they say “democratic discourse,” I want you to hear “the loudest voices win.”
When they say “digital town square,” I want you to hear “unmoderated chaos.”
These aren’t just semantic games—they’re the architecture of our new digital reality. Each phrase is another layer between what we’re told and what we experience, between the promise of connection and the practice of division.
I find myself returning to the early dreams of the web, when we imagined digital spaces as gardens to be tended, not markets to be exploited. It’s time to reclaim not just our platforms, but our very language—to speak plainly about what we’re building, what we’re breaking, and what we’re willing to sacrifice in the name of unconstrained growth.
The web I want to inhabit still has gardeners. It still has carpenters and caretakers. It still believes in the power of boundaries to create safety, and the strength of moderation to cultivate community. Most importantly, it still understands that true freedom comes not from the absence of constraints, but from the presence of care.
OpenAI is begging the British Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it’s supposedly “impossible” for the company to train its artificial intelligence models — and continue growing its multi-billion-dollar business — without them.
To me, this is simple. OpenAI is correct. They can’t continue their growth trajectory without exploiting books, blogs, feeds, websites, images and other content that’s under copyright. This is a flaw in their business model. The machine is hungry and needs to be fed. Public domain content will satiate its hunger for only so long.
But copyright is copyright, and copyrighted works should only be consumed and distributed with the consent of the copyright holder. My advice for folx writing and publishing online? Update your robots.txt files to prohibit crawling from known AI origins. If you need an example, here’s mine.
I’m an techno-optimist. I think we can figure out how to responsibly and ethically leverage AI in our lives. Perhaps the key to doing this is to slow down, and scale down. Take a slow web approach to it. That’s why SLMs are so interesting to me, especially in my specific professional use cases. You can be thoughtful with the application and actively monitor the impact.
I’m interested in your thoughts. Do you think there is any hope for a measured and throttled AI future? Or is this 10x-mindset train already barreling down the tracks toward dystopia?
After two decades of religiously tracking every step, every mile, and every heartbeat, I’ve decided to take off my fitness tracker. My health metrics tracking journey began in the aughts with a Jawbone (remember those?), then evolved to a Fitbit, an early generation Apple Watch, and then most recently to a COROS Apex as I got more serious in my endurance pursuits. The journey has been enlightening, but perhaps not in the way these devices' makers intended.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve been a dedicated member of the quantified self movement. Most mornings began with checking my sleep quality, each run or ride was meticulously recorded and posted to Strava, and most days ended with a review of my stats. The progression through devices—from the simple step counting of early Fitbits to the comprehensive health suite of the Apple Watch and the endurance-focused metrics of the COROS—reflected my growing appetite for more data, more insights, and more control.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
I started noticing how the numbers were shaping my behavior, and not always for the better. A relaxed-pace run wasn’t just a chance to enjoy fresh air and sunshine—it was a disappointing pace stat. A rest day wasn’t a conscious choice for recovery—it was an unfortunate break in my activity streak. The quantified self had become my qualified self, where the value of my activities was determined by what my watch thought about them.
The irony wasn’t lost on me: tools that were supposed to help me become more in tune with my body had actually created a layer of digital abstraction between me and my physical experience. I was no longer running to feel good, riding for the freedom and wind in my face or climbing for enjoyment—I was doing these things to feed the algorithms.
This realization led me to question the role of tracking in my life. Was I measuring to help me improve or was I becoming digitally dependent on the metrics? The constant stream of data had overshadowed the simple joy of movement, the natural rhythm of rest and activity, and the intuitive understanding of my body’s needs.
The decision to stop tracking wasn’t easy. My COROS was a loyal companion. It was with me through countless miles, crazy adventures, my first ultra, and with each new bouldering grade. It witnessed my growth as a runner, cyclist and climber, and provided the data that fueled my progress. But sometimes, progress means letting go of the tools that got you here.
Now, when I head out for a run, it’s just me, my breath, and the trail ahead. There’s no GPS track being drawn, no pace alerts buzzing on my wrist, no stats to upload and analyze afterward. It feels both foreign and familiar—like running to a home you’d forgotten you had.
I don’t think this is a total rejection of tracking technology or the quantified self movement. These tools can be incredibly valuable, especially when working toward specific goals or managing health conditions. But perhaps their greatest value lies in teaching us to eventually listen to ourselves again.
As I adjust to this new, untracked existence, I’m rediscovering something that no algorithm could quantify: the simple pleasure of moving through the world, unchanged by sensors and unmediated by screens. It turns out that sometimes the best way to move forward is to leave the numbers behind.
