SOMEONE BUILT A BETTER SOAPBOX
Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019
Social media, new media, old media – ablur with confusion, so much information, too much information, no vetting real v. fake, talking heads. Everyone with a device can be a publisher, has a megaphone and stands on their own soapbox.
Bearing so little reference or relevance to reliable-past, and – in my view – is only a stepping stone to an informed enlightened future.
I recently re-joined Medium . It was started as a ‘long-form’ of Twitter by one of the guys who founded Twitter. I was on it for a while but didn’t care for the early stages of their changes. I like how they’ve remade themselves. Not high-brow journalism, or tabloid-trash. A growing and viable repository for talented and, mostly, younger writers. Younger than me at any rate. I like a lot of what I read on Medium.com . I’ve gone back as an active reader, a member, and publisher. I’m less concerned about putting my work there now because of their work to strengthen their credibility. They’ve not weeded out crackpots and fools, but neither has the op-ed section of most traditional newspapers.
The trend I’m watching, waiting for, and it is not yet clearly defined in my mind – is some ‘sharing’ platform that lets all voices in but which screens out the phony, the fake, the pretenders, and subversives who are trying to hurt or undermine others. I see that in the future, and some programmer somewhere is probably creating it.
When you consider there is a closed=circuit TV camera just about everywhere on earth, when you consider the world’s business information, stock market activities, weather, and every other area of interest (sports, hobbies, entertainment, food) is available in real-time, available on-demand – all, from any place on earth where you have a device and a connection – surely someone will create a magic funnel that gives me what I want, and ONLY what I want, all the time. Anytime I want. And, which lets me send my input, opinion, work, ideas, and critique back up the funnel to add to any discussion, to critique, disagree with, or criticize anything that came through the funnel. In real-time, and in a way that anyone else interested in seeing commentary on that subject can see it. I’m not saying it should be an untamed wild-west of everyone for themselves, I’m not saying we should voluntarily surrender our privacy as a price for the platform. If, for a modest fee per month, I could get to ‘send’ my thoughts into the world the way streaming services, for a modest price per month, let me receive nearly everything I could imagine – then I’m on board, sign me up!
Until then, this is an excellent platform to read, write, comment, and see a broad range of salient commentary on just about any subject matter you would like to consider. It isn’t politico-talking-heads yelling over each other.
Sane and manageable.
I don’t have to have friends or cultivate followers. For just a modest fee per month, I have a soapbox to stand on in all kinds of weather. I can reach the whole world, and the entire world can find me. Easy.
Medium is still advertiser free – just a place to read and to write.
Think about that.
One big funnel two-way funnel.
