Dave Winer on hamsters and sharecropping

On why he won’t be posting stuff to the new Branch semi-private conversation thingy (the one I linked to earlier )

Anyway, I can’t just use it, because then I would be breaking a rule, one that keeps me from using services like Quora and Google-Plus. I’m not going to willfully put my writing in spaces that I have no control over. I’m tired of playing the hamster. The business models of these companies, if they become successful, keep them from being part of the web. And it’s not in my interest to support what they do, that’s the broad reason I don’t use them. Further, I am creating an archive of my writing, over many years. And if I scatter my writing all over the place, even if these services were part of the web, it would be against my interest to do that. Having it all in one place is value, to me at least.

via Scripting News: Before I use Branch.

2 thoughts on “Dave Winer on hamsters and sharecropping”

  1. That one place in the past wrt one’s own writing was the library. The question is should we become the curators of our own work? It seems the short term answer is yes, but I bet if my writing ever adds up to anything, a library will find it and take care of it.

    1. Unless you’re one day elected president, we may have to do without an institution curating the Cole Camplese Library. Failing that, documenting your own stuff seems sane. Libraries aren’t interested in the random posts of some guy…

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