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Happy Friday!

I think now is as good a time as any to remind ourselves of this from the introduction to the Cluetrain Manifesto:

What if the real attraction of the Internet is not its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that underlies its pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales?

In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenized broadcast media, sterilized mass "culture," and the enforced anonymity of bureaucratic organizations, the Internet connected people to each other and provided a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered.

Although I'm still not sure that 'atavistic' is the right word. It's used to emphasise the context created by 'prehistoric' but implies primitiveness when nothing could be further from the truth. Humanity's fascination with telling tales is an innate part of who we are and always will be.

Still, history repeats itself. The internet was seen as an alternative to the homogenised media and bureaucratic organisations but our modern-day versions have largely taken over. Hence the need for the IndieWeb, in whatever form you imagine it, to again redress the balance and reconnect people to each other directly rather than through the distorting lenses of the gatekeepers.

Those very gatekeepers, somewhat ironically, began life as services designed to connect, but money and scope and power have distorted their mission.