Culture Friendly Blogging

The revolution of the Internet has created new opportunities and challenges for both creators and consumers of content -- not least of all, it has blurred the line between the two. The culture of the Internet has seen constant tension between openness and control.

This blog attempts to both leverage and analyze Internet culture. Both the subject matter and medium rely on advantages of the Internet: openness, universal access, the ability to replicate and share content, and the democratization of content creation all make a blog like this possible. That isn't to say that closed content and architectures are antithetical to this blog. They are important. But, in order to really serve the Internet's primary constituency, content needs to put all readers on an equal footing.

As a result, I will favor content that leverages openness and sharing. In general terms, this means:

• free content over paid content
• open access over paywalls
• directly accessible content versus content behind a registration wall
• public domain or copylefted content over content subject to license
• attribution over anonymity
• distribution over technological restrictions
• web content over downloadable content
• primary sources over secondary sources.

Obviously, not all of this will be possible every time I link to external content. However, these are things to strive for to ensure a robust content ecosystem. Sites that try to implement these principles will be easier for both me and readers to use.

In keeping with this idea, I will not derive any profit from this blog, ever. I will not place ads or use SEO tricks. Not that there is anything wrong with writing, or even blogging, for profit; it has an important place on the Internet. But it would be inherently in tension with the kind of straightfoward, open, flexible project I am undertaking here.