About this Web 3 thing. Listen. I understood the Web in about a minute. Web 2.0, I played a role in defining and developing it. So you could say I got it. But Web 3? Why did they choose a name that promises so much, and more than anything -- simplicity. The idea of anything called "Web" being opaque, sounding like a scam, a VC's wet dream -- that's so counter to what the word means in tech. I shouldn't have to read a few white papers, and still not get it. Look, my intuition says that the web is the web is the web and there is no Web 3, there's just the web. I don't like that they usurped the name of something so simple and precious for something that looks scammy. I think they should have chosen a different name. #- I wrote this thread on Twitter this morning.#
- I’ve had a Peloton for a couple of weeks.#
- I got it so I could exercise when the weather is too nasty to go out for a ride or a walk.#
- I’ve done classes and rides with no content. I don’t like the classes. The impersonal “you can do I it” motivation is a real turn off. Who the heck are you, and yiu have no clue who I am. Ugh.#
- Why not have classes where you learn something? Then I’d look forward to it, instead of dreading it.#
- I’m going to keep trying with the classes. Basically I am already motivated, I love the high I get from exercise. But I wouldn’t mind using the time to learn stuff.#
- Then this evening I took a class with a teacher I really liked. And it made all the difference. I got a better workout, and I had fun. I even talked back a few times. Totally got into it. Weird. Peloton#
- Jeff Jarvis generously gave me support for the idea of using rivers in news orgs. I want to clarify that:#
- I appreciate the support. 😄 #
- I don't think I've ever "begged" though at times I imagine it might have seemed that way.#
- And I haven't been promoting rivers to them for quite some time, because I think the problems are much bigger now. #
- I think the most important thing news orgs can do to improve their service is to include ideas and perspectives from outside the newsroom, esp those that are critical of their work. #
- I would encourage a news org to run a river of sources their reporters consider authoritative. Blogs, newsletters, and whatever new forms come up in the future. This would initially be an internal resource, but the obvious next step is to share the resource with their readers, in the interest of increasing news flow, broadening perspectives, and also introducing transparency. And perhaps most important to introduce criticism of their work to their flow, something we need and they need. If I were going to beg for anything that would most likely be it. I wrote about how this would work in more detail in May 2015. #
- When I read yet another NYT article or op-ed about how Facebook is letting us down, I keep wondering when they're going to look at how they contribute to this problem, how their coverage of Hillary's Emails, for example, gave Trump the White House, and set the country on the path to authoritarianism. I think they did far more damage than Facebook, and not surprisingly, that has not been examined to anywhere near the extent Facebook has. This is a serious problem, and it's not going to get better in the current news system. That's where rivers could make a huge difference, if they cared enough about the service they provide readers.#
- PS: This is what a River of News looks like. #