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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<opml version="1.0">
<head>
<title>newclues</title>
<expansionState>0,1,19,20,28,37,41,48,56,57,70,78,95,105,113,118,125,126,137,150</expansionState>
</head>
<body>
<outline text="Preamble">
<outline text="Hear O Internet.">
<outline text="It has been fifteen years since our previous communication."/>
<outline text="In that time the People of the Internet — you and me and all our friends of friends of friends, unto the last Kevin Bacon — have made the Internet an awesome place, filled with wonders and portents."/>
<outline text="From the serious to the lolworthy to the wtf, we have up-ended titans, created heroes, and changed the most basic assumptions about
How Things Work and Who We Are."/>
<outline text="But now all the good work we've done together faces mortal dangers."/>
<outline text="When we first came before you, it was to warn of the threat posed by those who did not understand that they did not understand the Internet."/>
<outline text="These are The Fools, the businesses that have merely adopted the trappings of the Internet."/>
<outline text="Now two more hordes threaten all that we have built for one another."/>
<outline text="The Marauders understand the Internet all too well. They view it as theirs to plunder, extracting our data and money from it, thinking that we are the fools."/>
<outline text="But most dangerous of all is the third horde: Us."/>
<outline text="A horde is an undifferentiated mass of people. But the glory of the Internet is that it lets us connect as diverse and distinct individuals."/>
<outline text="We all like mass entertainment. Heck, TV's gotten pretty great these days, and the Net lets us watch it when we want. Terrific."/>
<outline text="But we need to remember that delivering mass media is the least of the Net's powers."/>
<outline text="The Net's super-power is connection without permission. Its almighty power is that we can make of it whatever we want."/>
<outline text="It is therefore not time to lean back and consume the oh-so-tasty junk food created by Fools and Marauders as if our work were done. It is time to breathe in the fire of the Net and transform every institution that would play us for a patsy."/>
<outline text="An organ-by-organ body snatch of the Internet is already well underway. Make no mistake: with a stroke of a pen, a covert handshake, or by allowing memes to drown out the cries of the afflicted we can lose the Internet we love."/>
<outline text="We come to you from the years of the Web's beginning. We have grown old together on the Internet. Time is short."/>
<outline text="We, the People of the Internet, need to remember the glory of its revelation so that we reclaim it now in the name of what it truly is. "/>
</outline>
</outline>
<outline text="Once we were young in the garden…">
<outline text="The Internet is us, connected.">
<outline text="The Internet is not made of copper wire, glass fiber, radio waves, or even tubes."/>
<outline text="The devices we use to connect to the Internet are not the Internet."/>
<outline text="Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, and 中国电信 do not own the Internet. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are not the Net's monarchs, nor yet are their minions or algorithms. Not the governments of the Earth nor their Trade Associations have the consent of the networked to bestride the Net as sovereigns.;"/>
<outline text="We hold the Internet in common and as unowned."/>
<outline text="From us and from what we have built on it does the Internet derive all its value."/>
<outline text="The Net is of us, by us, and for us."/>
<outline text="The Internet is ours."/>
</outline>
<outline text="The Internet is nothing and has no purpose.">
<outline text="The Internet is not a thing any more than gravity is a thing. Both pull us together."/>
<outline text="The Internet is no-thing at all. At its base the Internet is a set of agreements, which the geeky among us (long may their names be hallowed) call "protocols," but which we might, in the temper of the day, call "commandments.""/>
<outline text="The first among these is: Thy network shall move all packets closer to their destinations without favor or delay based on origin, source, content, or intent."/>
<outline text="Thus does this First Commandment lay open the Internet to every idea, application, business, quest, vice, and whatever."/>
<outline text="There has not been a tool with such a general purpose since language."/>
<outline text="This means the Internet is not for anything in particular. Not for social networking, not for documents, not for advertising, not for business, not for education, not for porn, not for anything. It is specifically designed for everything."/>
<outline text="Optimizing the Internet for one purpose de-optimizes it for all others."/>
<outline text="The Internet like gravity is indiscriminate in its attraction. It pulls us all together, the virtuous and the wicked alike."/>
</outline>
<outline text="The Net is not content.">
<outline text="There is great content on the Internet. But holy mother of cheeses, the Internet is not made out of content."/>
<outline text="A teenager's first poem, the blissful release of a long-kept secret, a fine sketch drawn by a palsied hand, a blog post in a regime that hates the sound of its people's voices — none of these people sat down to write content."/>
<outline text="Did we use the word "content" without quotes? We feel so dirty."/>
</outline>
<outline text="The Net is not a medium.">
<outline text="The Net is not a medium any more than a conversation is a medium."/>
<outline text="On the Net, we are the medium. We are the ones who move messages. We do so every time we post or retweet, send a link in an email, or post it on a social network."/>
<outline text="Unlike a medium, you and I leave our fingerprints, and sometimes bite marks, on the messages we pass. We tell people why we're sending it. We argue with it. We add a joke. We chop off the part we don't like. We make these messages our own."/>
<outline text="Every time we move a message through the Net, it carries a little bit of ourselves with it."/>
<outline text="We only move a message through this "medium" if it matters to us in one of the infinite ways that humans care about something."/>
<outline text="Caring — mattering — is the motive force of the Internet."/>
</outline>
<outline text="The Web is a Wide World">
<outline text="In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee used the Net to create a gift he gave freely to us all: the World Wide Web. Thank you"/>
<outline text="Boom. Within ten years we had billions of pages on the Web — a combined effort on the order of a World War, and yet so benign that the biggest complaint was the <blink> tag."/>
<outline text="The Web is an impossibly large, semi-persistent realm of items discoverable in their dense inter-connections."/>
<outline text="That sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, that's what the world is."/>
<outline text="Unlike the real world, every thing and every connection on the Web was created by some one of us expressing an interest and an assumption about how those small pieces go together."/>
<outline text="Every link is a little act of generosity, a little act of selflessness, bidding our readers leave our page to see how the world looks to someone else."/>
<outline text="The Web remakes the world in our collective, emergent image."/>
</outline>
</outline>
<outline text="But oh how we have strayed, sisters and brothers…">
<outline text="How did we let conversation get weaponized anyway?">
<outline text="It's important to notice and cherish the talk, the friendship, the thousand acts of sympathy, kindness, and joy we encounter on the Internet."/>
<outline text="And yet we hear the words "fag" and "nigger" far more on the Net than off."/>
<outline text="Demonization of 'them' — people with looks, languages, opinions, memberships and other groupings we don't understand, like, or tolerate — is worse than ever on the Internet."/>
<outline text="Women in Saudi Arabia can't drive? Meanwhile, half of us can't speak on the Net without looking over our shoulders."/>
<outline text="Hatred is present on the Net because it's present in the world, but the Net makes it easier to express and to hear."/>
<outline text="The solution: If we had a solution, we wouldn't be bothering you with all these damn clues."/>
<outline text="We can say this much: Hatred didn't call the Net into being, but it is holding the Net — and us — back."/>
<outline text="Let's at least acknowledge that the Net has values implicit in it. Human values."/>
<outline text="Viewed coldly the Net is just technology. But it's populated by creatures who are warm with what they care about: their lives, their friends, the world we share."/>
<outline text="The Net offers us a common place where we can be who we are, with others who delight in our differences."/>
<outline text="No one owns that place. Everybody can use it. Anyone can improve it."/>
<outline text="That's what an open Internet is. Wars have been fought for less."/>
</outline>
<outline text=""We agree about everything. I find you fascinating!"">
<outline text="The world is spread out before us like a buffet, and yet we stick with our steak and potatoes, lamb and hummus, fish and rice, or whatever."/>
<outline text="We do this in part because conversation requires a common ground: shared language, interests, norms, understandings. Without those, it's hard or even impossible to have a conversation."/>
<outline text="Shared grounds spawn tribes. The Earth’s solid ground kept tribes at a distance, enabling them to develop rich differences. Rejoice! Tribes give rise to Us vs. Them and war. Rejoice? Not so much."/>
<outline text="On the Internet, the distance between tribes starts at zero."/>
<outline text="Apparently knowing how to find one another interesting is not as easy as it looks."/>
<outline text="That's a challenge we can meet by being open, sympathetic, and patient. We can do it, team! We're #1! We're #1!"/>
<outline text="Being welcoming: There's a value the Net needs to learn from the best of our real world cultures."/>
</outline>
<outline text="c. Marketing still makes it harder to talk.">
<outline text="We were right the first time: Markets are conversations."/>
<outline text="A conversation isn't your business tugging at our sleeve to shill a product we don't want to hear about."/>
<outline text="if we want to know the truth about your products, we'll find out from one another."/>
<outline text="We understand that these conversations are incredibly valuable to you. Too bad. They're ours."/>
<outline text="You're welcome to join our conversation, but only if you tell us who you work for, and if you can speak for yourself and as yourself."/>
<outline text="Every time you call us "consumers" we feel like cows looking up the word "meat.""/>
<outline text="Quit fracking our lives to extract data that's none of your business and your machines misinterpret."/>
<outline text="Don't worry: we'll tell you when we're in the market for something. In our own way. Not yours. Trust us: this will be good for you."/>
<outline text="Ads that sound human but come from your marketing department's irritable bowels, stain the fabric of the Web."/>
<outline text="When personalizing something is creepy, it's a pretty good indication that you don't understand what it means to be a person."/>
<outline text="Personal is human. Personalized isn't."/>
<outline text="The more machines sound human, the more they slide down into the uncanny valley where everything is a creep show."/>
<outline text="Also: Please stop dressing up ads as news in the hope we'll miss the little disclaimer hanging off their underwear."/>
<outline text="When you place a "native ad," you're eroding not just your own trustworthiness, but the trustworthiness of this entire new way of being with one another."/>
<outline text="And, by the way, how about calling "native ads" by any of their real names: "product placement," "advertorial," or "fake fuckinggosh darn news"?"/>
<outline text="Advertisers got along without being creepy for generations. They can get along without being creepy on the Net, too."/>
</outline>
<outline text="The Gitmo of the Net.">
<outline text="We all love our shiny apps, even when they're sealed as tight as a Moon base. But put all the closed apps in the world together and you have a pile of apps."/>
<outline text="Put all the Web pages together and you have a new world."/>
<outline text="Web pages are about connecting. Apps are about control."/>
<outline text="As we move from the Web to an app-based world, we lose the commons we were building together."/>
<outline text="In the Kingdom of Apps, we are users, not makers."/>
<outline text="Every new page makes the Web bigger. Every new link makes the Web richer."/>
<outline text="Every new app gives us something else to do on the bus."/>
<outline text="Ouch, a cheap shot!"/>
<outline text="Hey, "CheapShot" would make a great new app! It's got "in-app purchase" written all over it."/>
</outline>
<outline text="Gravity's great until it sucks us all into a black hole.">
<outline text="Non-neutral applications built on top of the neutral Net are becoming as inescapable as the pull of a black hole."/>
<outline text="If Facebook is your experience of the Net, then you've strapped on goggles from a company with a fiduciary responsibility to keep you from ever taking the goggles off."/>
<outline text="Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple are all in the goggles business. The biggest truth their goggles obscure: These companies want to hold us the way black holes hold light."/>
<outline text="These corporate singularities are dangerous not because they are evil. Many of them in fact engage in quite remarkably civic behavior. They should be applauded for that."/>
<outline text="But they benefit from the gravity of sociality: The "network effect" is that thing where lots of people use something because lots of people use it."/>
<outline text="Where there aren't competitive alternatives, we need to be hypervigilant to remind these Titans of the Valley of the webby values that first inspired them."/>
<outline text="And then we need to honor the sound we make when any of us bravely pulls away from them. It's something between the noise of a rocket leaving the launchpad and the rip of Velcro as you undo a too-tight garment."/>
</outline>
<outline text="Privacy in an age of spies.">
<outline text="Ok, government, you win. You've got our data. Now, what can we do to make sure you use it against Them and not against Us? In fact, can you tell the difference?"/>
<outline text="If we want our government to back off, the deal has to be that if — when — the next attack comes, we can't complain that they should have surveilled us harder."/>
<outline text="A trade isn't fair trade if we don't know what we're giving up. Do you hear that, Security for Privacy trade-off?"/>
<outline text="With a probability approaching absolute certainty, we are going to be sorry we didn't do more to keep data out of the hands of our governments and corporate overlords."/>
</outline>
<outline text="Privacy in an age of weasels.">
<outline text="Personal privacy is fine for those who want it. And we all draw the line somewhere."/>
<outline text="Q: How long do you think it took for pre-Web culture to figure out where to draw the lines? A: How old is culture?"/>
<outline text="The Web is barely out of its teens. We are at the beginning, not the end, of the privacy story."/>
<outline text="We can only figure out what it means to be private once we figure out what it means to be social. And we've barely begun to re-invent that."/>
<outline text="The economic and political incentives to de-pants and up-skirt us are so strong that we'd be wise to invest in tinfoil underwear."/>
<outline text="Hackers got us into this and hackers will have to get us out."/>
</outline>
</outline>
<outline text="To build and to plant">
<outline text="Kumbiyah sounds surprisingly good in an echo chamber.">
<outline text="The Internet is astounding. The Web is awesome. You are beautiful. Connect us all and we are more crazily amazing than Jennifer Lawrence. These are simple facts."/>
<outline text="So let's not minimize what the Net has done in the past twenty years:"/>
<outline text="There's so much more music in the world."/>
<outline text="We now make most of our culture for ourselves, with occasional forays to a movie theater for something blowy-uppy and a $9 nickel-bag of popcorn."/>
<outline text="Politicians now have to explain their positions far beyond the one-page "position papers" they used to mimeograph."/>
<outline text="Anything you don't understand you can find an explanation for. And a discussion about. And an argument over. Is it not clear how awesome that is?"/>
<outline text="You want to know what to buy? The business that makes an object of desire is now the worst source of information about it. The best source is all of us."/>
<outline text="You want to listen in on a college-level course about something you're interested in? Google your topic. Take your pick. For free."/>
<outline text="Yeah, the Internet hasn't solved all the world's problems. That's why the Almighty hath given us asses: that we might get off of them."/>
<outline text="Internet naysayers keep us honest. We just like 'em better when they aren't ingrates."/>
</outline>
<outline text="A pocket full of homilies.">
<outline text="We were going to tell you how to fix the Internet in four easy steps, but the only one we could remember is the last one: profit. So instead, here are some random thoughts…"/>
<outline text="We should be supporting the artists and creators who bring us delight or ease our burdens."/>
<outline text="We should have the courage to ask for the help we need."/>
<outline text="We have a culture that defaults to sharing and laws that default to copyright. Copyright has its place, but when in doubt, open it up."/>
<outline text="In the wrong context, everyone's an a-hole. (Us, too. But you already knew that.) So if you're inviting people over for a swim, post the rules. All trolls, out of the pool!"/>
<outline text="If the conversations at your site are going badly, it's your fault."/>
<outline text="Wherever the conversation is happening, no one owes you a response, no matter how reasonable your argument or how winning your smile."/>
<outline text="Support the businesses that truly "get" the Web. You'll recognize them not just because they sound like us, but because they're on our side."/>
<outline text="Sure, apps offer a nice experience. But the Web is about links that constantly reach out, connecting us without end. For lives and ideas, completion is death. Choose life."/>
<outline text="Anger is a license to be stupid. The Internet's streets are already crowded with licensed drivers."/>
<outline text="Live the values you want the Internet to promote."/>
<outline text="If you've been talking for a while, shut up. (We will very soon.)"/>
</outline>
<outline text="Being together: the cause of and solution to every problem.">
<outline text="Being together: the cause of and solution to every problem."/>
<outline text="If we have focused on the role of the People of the Net — you and us — in the Internet's fall from grace, that's because we still have the faith we came in with."/>
<outline text="We, the People of the Net, cannot fathom how much we can do together because we are far from finished inventing how to be together."/>
<outline text="The Internet has liberated an ancient force — the gravity drawing us together."/>
<outline text="The gravity of connection is love."/>
<outline text="Long live the open Internet."/>
<outline text="Long may we have our Internet to love."/>
</outline>
</outline>
</body>
</opml>