I've been reading Cory Doctorow for decades, and he has hit the nail on the nose in his new book, Enshittification. Go read it to understand the challenges facing our technologically transformed society.
I'm an old grognard, the last generation to have grown up without electronics. I was taught to use a slide rule in high school. We used tables of numbers to solve trig problems. I remember my first calculator very fondly. A bio major at college, I programmed a bit of Fortran on punch cards running batch jobs, and I had an account on the university VAX mainframe. I had a work-study job in the first IBM PC lab.
And I was also among the earliest of early adopters — the PC revolution created my career. Using Aldus PageMaker to do graphic design for a local newspaper was my first real job. At my second, I created custom HyperCard stacks to compile the obituaries, and at my third job, a big-time (to me) business magazine in New York City on Park Avenue, I jumped to Quark XPress for professional pre-press print layout, and helped launch my magazine's first website; the IT folk created a custom CMS using their own hacked-together ColdFusion back end. (And yes, they really had a thing back then for names with capital letters in the middle of phrases smushed together without spaces!) I started at $29,500 a year there, basically doubling my salary, and I was SO happy to get it. I remember how excited I was when Google launched. I'm still a professional Web editor and digital writer today.
In my personal time, I've been running this website since 1999. And I started it on Geocities. It is all hand-made HTML and a little custom CSS. I'm writing this, as I write everything on this site, in my hosting company's HTML editor. I offer this personal history as a way of vouching to my young reader that I do know a bit of what I'm talking about when I say that Cory has hit it right on the nose.
Cory Doctorow
The gist of Cory's thesis is that entrepreneurs launch great products on the Internet, and users flock to them. Then the entrepreneurs (or the companies that buy them out) make things a little worse for users to attract advertisers or other companies. Then, the entrepreneurs make it worse for everybody and rake in the rent (because at this point they are really rentiers, not entrepreneurs). If the rentiers are a web site, then other people run away to another site. But if they are an app or a social media platform, then it is hard for victims to leave because of "network effects," that is, it is hard to leave your friends and data you've devoted to the app or platform or online retailer, or whatever. Go read Cory for more.
I've seen this myself, of course, and so have you. Facebook and Twitter are the best examples. Google and Amazon too. And tied up in this is monopoly consolidation in the tech sector and copyright laws that make it very hard to start a competitor or to fix it yourself. Cory is very interested in solving these issues, and he devotes a lot of time to solutions. He is interested in using government power to break monopolies, foster competition, make it easy to leave online walled gardens, increase interoperability — again, go read him. But he is interested in big fixes, in societal change. He neglects, I think, change on the personal level. Probably because the personal solution that is the subject of this screed will never appeal to more than a few people. That personal solution is the Small Web.
Parimal Satyal
In these two essays, Parimal reveals a deep enthusiasm for the World Wide Web as it once was, featuring individually published websites and personality-driven content. He also shows a deep distaste for the corporatized Web, for platforms that take advantage of users. He says, "The major websites of today's web are not built for the visitor, but as means of using her. Our visitor has become a data point, a customer profile, a potential lead -- a proverbial fly in the spider's web. In the guise of user-centered design, we're building an increasingly user-hostile web."
But he is thrilled with the alternative that is the Small Web. Parimal enthuses, "Most people who made these websites were neither professionals nor companies; they were simply people who wanted to share their interests." He has some great examples: A Laurel and Hardy fan site, a commemorative Coca-Cola bottle site, an ASCII art gallery.
The Cheapskate's Guide to Computers and the Internet
Mister Cheapskate thinks that the corporate Web is a tasty salad made with mouse droppings. Your choices may seem to be eating the salad or walking away from the table, but Cheapskate urges us to try a third way ... and make our own darn salad! He suggests that rather than chasing followers or likes or shares, "we should be creating websites because we have something to share that has value to us that we think others may also benefit from. Ideally, a personal website should be thought of as a gift to all Internet users and as a way for each of us to express the issues, thoughts, and viewpoints that are important to us, unfiltered through a giant corporation's algorithm."
If you need convincing, he offers a compelling case for having your own indie site. And if you are tech-fluent, he has great how-tos for running your own server and really being on your own. Me, I'm content using a hosting service for my rough-hewn HTML.
Ana Rodrigues
Ana has great advice woven into her personal story of why and how to have your own site. I especially like her advice for people who feel discouraged if they do not know all the tech details for the latest gizmos, bells, and whistles. She says, "When I first started to participate in the community and attend their meet-ups and camps, I created this unnecessary pressure on myself to do and use all the protocols and APIs suggested in order to create a full 'social' experience ... it really is unnecessary pressure. It was all in my head. The more I try to do those things, the more I failed and no progress at all was made. ... You don't have to over-engineer."
I totally agree! A basic home page is a great place to start — "It doesn't matter if all you have is a simple page with your name and email," Ana says, and that's a lesson to take to heart. Your site is your site, so be happy with it! Look at how my front page has evolved, from this to this.
One reason that social networks like Facebook and Twitter stole all the oxygen and eclipsed the old indie Web is that those networks made it EASY to get online and post content. Also easy to comment, like, and respond to other people's content. We can't ignore, I think, the value of ease-of-use. Like Ana says, you do not need the doo-dads and widgets, but for many people, just typing HTML and HEAD and BODY tags is a barrier to entry, not to mention code for formatting, linking, and images. And those are the very basics. Some may look down on easier options, but I understand Cory's desire to regulate social media back into a good thing like it used to be when, say, Facebook was first launched. And in that vein, I have no issues with people who use blogging platforms, like Blogger and WordPress and SquareSpace. Yes, these are more corporate-controlled, but these sites are intended to be friendlier than coding your own, and at least they get you online. They also make it easy to add comment sections, RSS feeds, and other "advanced" features.
Brennan Brown
Brennan writes a LOT about the IndieWeb. I count about 27 posts in just over a year on the topic! Some of his topics include funding, really technical topics, an essay for writers who do not have mad coding skillz, webrings and directories, and a lot more. Good stuff.
IndieWeb.org
IndieWeb.org is a community for us Small Web people. There are essays, how-tos, community events, and more. In addition to the links above, there's an essay on indie sites in academia, on a monthly blog-on-a-theme community event, a newsletter, and more. Once you have your indie site, join it!
Webrings: geekring | HotLine | Retronaut Ring
Webrings are ways to stay connected by linking indie sites to other indie sites. Check out the Wikipedia article on the topic. Back in the day, there were tons; I was in a Taur ring, a D&D ring, etc. These days, the Small Web is so small that there is not a lot of specialization. It is all for one, one for all, and not too many that are topic-specific. Still very fun to wander through people's websites at random.
Here are a bunch more resources that may give you things to read, places to go, an indie social network to join, and more:
smolweb | Good Internet magazine | Internet Is Fun | Blue Dwarf
After you browse these links, and especially after you check out a bunch of indie sites, I hope you'll be inspired to start your own. I've been running mine for a while, and I'm still excited and happy after I post something new. So try it, and maybe you'll find some joy in the Small Web, as I have.
Illustration credit: Public domain art by Hokusai Katsushika, 1760-1849, downloaded from the U.S. Library of Congress
