Milner sounds more like a traditional media mogul than a Web entrepreneur. But that’s exactly the point. If we’re moving away from the open Web, it’s at least in part because of the rising dominance of businesspeople more inclined to think in the all-or-nothing terms of traditional media than in the come-one-come-all collectivist utopianism of the Web. This is not just natural maturation but in many ways the result of a competing idea — one that rejects the Web’s ethic, technology, and business models. The control the Web took from the vertically integrated, top-down media world can, with a little rethinking of the nature and the use of the Internet, be taken back.
This development — a familiar historical march, both feudal and corporate, in which the less powerful are sapped of their reason for being by the better resourced, organized, and efficient — is perhaps the rudest shock possible to the leveled, porous, low-barrier-to-entry ethos of the Internet Age. After all, this is a battle that seemed fought and won — not just toppling newspapers and music labels but also AOL and Prodigy and anyone who built a business on the idea that a curated experience would beat out the flexibility and freedom of the Web.
Nils Peterson on 15 Sep 09Pointing to the open API of Facebook as an aid to its popularity is interesting, but its a technical consideration to interoperate with other systems. My question is, does increased interoperation facilitate more collaboration and open the potential for collaboration by difference. What if Geo Hotz had used Twitter & FB rather than Blogger. Could he? Would it have made a difference? I am finding that having my blog linked to FB is getting me a little (very little) more attention and commenting than without it. But my friends only comment on things I say about Health Care; they don't seem interested in explorations of rubric-based assessment of learning.
