Writing For The Web | iWritebox

Notes And Thoughts Concerning Web Writing

Crass commercialism
Commercialism And Writing

We know all too well that the internet, along with the World Wide Web which enables publishing has been thoroughly abused and exploited by some of the worst elements in our society; I don’t just mean the cowboys and rogue ‘guru’ community, Silicon Valley itself has been the most successful commercial project in the history of media!

Not all of this is bad, we also know that our world is run on the basis of currency, trading and sales. The massive head start which was given to Silicon Valley projects was the result of massive funding and investment that was mobilised on the basis of what the WWW enabled us to achieve. From 1989 the future planning of media projects became possible; prior to the Web being released after Tim Berners-Lee developed his document management system for CERN research workers, entities such as Google, or Facebook were impossible, it was the Web that allowed publishing  on the internet to massively unfold.

Full credit must go to Mr Berners-Lee for anticipating the enormous benefit this WWW technology would have for people, he is reported as suggesting that publishing would become ‘Democratised’, however I think he actually meant that publishing would become open sourced and freely available.

The enthusiasm and energy of these early commercial projects, the YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google entities worked towards their mass uptake and support from the public-at-large. It has also been this mass uptake which has worked against us all, perhaps our laziness and compulsive nature has resulted in web media becoming a repeat story of the previous broadcast media domination by the few, and the stifling of broad opinion, and discussion; not just this, but the marginalisation of large numbers of people who maybe do not go along with world views of Silicon Valley moguls and their minions of engineers and young entrepreneurs.

Words, language is all that we humans have, our entire civilisation is only possible, and made real because we have language; yes we also have numbers, but I include mathematics as being a communication skill, a means to describe our universe, the technologies we have built serve to amplify our reach and our thoughts, the internet and the WWW is the maximal expression of communication, we need to be careful who we entrust with executing on its most powerful expression.

Looking backwards over the past 30 years or so, we can see just how effectively the venture capital among the Silicon Valley communities has enabled them to gain dominance over the world of publishing and mass media; the internet became heavily politicised, and following the populism emergence of 2016 they determined to try and stamp out both conservative voices and those who oppose the globalist tyranny of Chicom, and technocrat ideologies.

Today we need more people to educate themselves, to build literacy, and technical skills to confront the dominance of Silicon Valley, and offer alternative views and political narratives, to execute on the original intentions of Tim Berners-Lee to open up publication and publishing on the Web.

It seems many people have been seduced into believing that Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube represent the full scope of the internet; these people don’t seem to understand the enormous opportunity they have for independent publishing, these are the people I am trying to reach, to help them to understand.

Additionally I want to provide support, and assistance for those people who do understand the full scope and range of the World Wide Web.

We are not talking about building clones of social media platforms, or seeking to emulate ‘Medium’ necessarily; we are talking about independent publications, and opportunities to reach ‘niche audiences’. We need to refine our language, brush up our graphical skills, learn how to produce videos and audio podcasts.

I am assuming a literate audience, so if you cannot discipline yourself to read this page, for example, then journalism and building media will not interest you!

Make 2021 the year that you commit to changing your life; execute on that desire to make a difference in the world and become a published voice.

If you are ‘put off’ because I mention Alex jones, then you should check yourself for being brainwashed and influenced by mainstream culture, I am not interested in the dreary ‘Adsense’ community, I think this has worked to trivialise and distract people from doing their best work: making a living is important, but being authentic has to count for something also.

Anyway, if  this ‘resonates’ with you, I am interested with assisting the aspiring analyst, writers and those who can see the value of pursuing the independent path.

Writing for the web is a unique craft, we have the profound opportunity to reach people in ways humanity has never had access to in previous times: we need to appreciate this, and respect the craft. We are not simply ‘copy writers’ and hacks, we should strive to embrace professional standards.