Werd I/O

The internet is mostly all the same. What does it take to empower new kinds of communities? What does radical collaboration look like? How might we help people change the world? What does it take to build an operating system for inclusive democratic revolution?

I'm going to take a break for a while. If you need to get in touch, you can always email me: ben@werd.io.

Today would have marked my mother’s 71st birthday. To mark the occasion, a repost: here’s what I want you to know about her. https://werd.io/2021/what-do-i-want-you-to-know-about-ma

Far-right governments everywhere should be resisted. Protests give me hope.

Thoughtocomplete

I’m more comfortable with LLMs if I think of them as autocomplete for thinking. They don’t reason and aren’t really AI but they can offer decent suggestions. And maybe that’s ok?

The challenge, as with all software, is doing it privately and safely.

Pitch: a private blogging platform for businesses that you log into with Slack or Microsoft Teams, with a built-in RSS reader. New post notifications go to channels or email. Free for a fairly generous initial tier; over 50 blogs, corporate SAML, or ACL requires a subscription.

I wish I could claw back time and be there to hug my mother one more time; to talk to her; to be in her presence; to care for her how she needed to be cared for. I wish I could do it over. I wish I could do so much over.

We're throwing a free event on tech, justice, and economic mobility - and you're invited. It takes place online and in-person in Chicago from May 18-20. It's free to attend. This is a save-the-date announcement - but trust me, you'll want to meet our speakers. https://19thnews.org/2023-summit/

Starting to get cold VC outreach from funds I've never heard of who allegedly want to invest in the organization I work for, which is a non-profit newsroom that is wholly unsuitable for venture capital investment. So, uh, how's the VC market doing, guys?

The more services incorporate GPT, the more input boxes on the web get fed through OpenAI's servers, and the more it becomes both a single point of failure and an obvious way to capture data from across the web.

Watching my baby figure out how to crawl. It's humbling and amazing. I think he'll get it today. And if not, there's always tomorrow.

If you incentivize someone to increase engagement in your product, they will. But if you're not careful, you might find that your product starts to look just like someone else's.

Every corporate consumer platform starts to look like the most popular consumer platform of the era over time.

Small communities federated together using the same underlying standards feel obvious to me as the future of social. But I'm neck-deep in it and have been advocating for this for twenty years. So why am I wrong?

"Enter your email address to keep reading. This is not a paywall."

I beg to differ: it is a paywall. Just not one where the currency is cash. You're paying with your attention, your identity, and your data.

For a while I was deeply into the podcasting universe, but these days I really just want text that I can consume in my own way, at my own pace, using my own imagination. Call it impatience. But I love that podcasts exist and that so many people make and listen.

Which sales enablement tool powers all those template-driven follow-up-heavy cold emails? I hereby petition that we yeet it directly into the sun.

Few things terrify me more than yoga, which is really a terror and dissatisfaction with my own body. I would like to fix that.

I’m worried I have delayed onset long covid. I’ve had very strong fatigue, shortness of breath, congestion, and muscle aches for weeks. I can tell that having these symptoms while taking care of a baby is not going to be a walk in the park. Really hoping I can overcome them.

What’s the last book you read and loved?

Finding that the cognitive load of plugging into Mastodon is approaching the cognitive load of being plugged into Twitter. It's not the content of the conversations; it's the river of content itself. I'm going to give myself a break today and see how it feels.

I think it's a fair question to ask why the Washington Post is laying off journalists right now. Other orgs have activist investors or fragile bottom lines; it has Jeff Bezos. Given that layoffs don't really work, what's the point beyond optics?

I'm not sure how "centrist" became equated with "reasonable". In a place where the entire political spectrum (and Overton window) is shifted to the right, the center is still right. Is that truly reasonable and equitable? Or is it just comfortable to powers that be?

Speaking loudly about ethics in tech and media is more important than it's ever been. And it'll only become more important as time goes on. Use your voice - please.

Would a journalism venture studio work? Why / why not?