A billion rights don’t make a wrong
Except for a few books and thousands of long-since-tossed magazines and newspapers, all my writing is on the Web.
Some of that died long ago. For example, David Bunnell (four days older than me, and for whom I was often mistaken) did nothing (to my knowledge*) to save the archives of Upside, which contained an enormous sum of early Net and Web history, and to which I contributed a single essay, not long after The Cluetrain Manifesto came out.
But lots more is still up. Alas, Google now considers them dangerous, because they are known to the world by the Web’s founding protocol—http—and not by its encrypted version: https. So Google calls all the millions (billions?) of http sites dangerous and scares visitors away. One example is the Linux Journal page linked to by the image above.
In Let me say this: Fuck Google, Dave gets this right. His explanation here is required reading for anyone who cares about history and archives. Bottom line: Google’s not secure message means this: “Google tried to take control of the open web and this site said no.”
Grayed matter
Also gone are all the digital archives of Fast Company, Industry Standard, Business 2.0, and Red Herring, which competed with Upside in the early days of the Web. Pieces written by David Weinberger and Chris Locke, two of Cluetrain‘s co-authors, are also erased from the Web’s whiteboard.
I agree
Dylan Tweeney says AI is going to increase demand for human writers.
OMGF
Warning: Severe Public Service Wolf Crying
The Monroe County Alert System just ran their sirens all over town for more than a minute. They do this once a month at noon. Do they need to? Do they also need to warn that there will be a “severe thunderstorm” when what’s coming is typical summer afternoon thundershower? Or warn that “severe flooding” might be coming from the same? Yes, I appreciate warnings about approaching tornadoes. Thanks to that (and all the weather apps on my phone), I was able to shoot some tornado video back in February. (You get to hear the sirens on that one.) But I’m close to canceling the alerts, because they come too often and not for real emergencies.
_________
*As I recall, he wanted the whole thing gone when it went bankrupt. But I might have that wrong, and I welcome correction. He was a good guy, and a born journalist and publisher. I liked him, and he passed way too young.
Leave a Reply