The Internet has been a wonderfully free and open place. It’s also provided a miracle that one person can reach any of the worlds net-connected billions … if they can be found.
Large Social media and Search companies, have provided wonderful services to humanity. They save lives by connecting people with solutions to those in need, and the velocity of information exchange they abet turbo charges technological advancement rates.
We can’t take freedom for granted though. Incentives being what they are, there will be pressure to consolidate, control, and effectively censor content that doesn’t help the powers that be… or just to hide what doesn’t make them money.
The way search algorithms work, a site pointing out content they appreciate does some good even if no-one actually visits the site doing the pointing. Search engines will index better, competing engines in the future will have a head start. But some people will visit, especially if search engines start limiting results, and surfing again becomes necessary. Remember in a pre-Google world, the “OG” way of finding stuff? There were web rings individuals created between similar sites as well as bloggers having link list pages of sites they appreciated.
That’s what this site is about: just my little oar in the stream, as I sit in a boat with a billion plus world citizens on it. We can each say thank you and provide fail-safes to an open web whenever we share stuff; whether we share on little sites like this, or point out individual efforts from within the super-sized walled gardens like Facebook.
