The Offline Report

(** Denotes a second bliki appendage added 8/17/2018, below .) In blogs we linked to each other's ideas. In facebook people link to other people, not their ideas. A facebook user links to another facebook user by typing their name with a prepended '@' sign. Blogs = ideas. Facebook = people. Facebook discourages linking to a user's post (idea) in these ways: a) facebook frequently changes their interface and policies, and b) no link to a specific facebook post is human-readable. You'll find no embedded dates or human-readable names in a hyperlink pointing to a facebook blog post. Daisychaining On a blog you very quickly can get up to speed on an idea from blog A, post A1 and add onto it in your own blog B, post B1. Blogger A won't notice your citation right away but if they do, they can daisy-chain your idea in with theirs on post A2. Or they can reject your idea and daisy-chain their own ideas post A1 and post A2 into post A3. Daisy-chaining of id...

A British journalist said this on Twitter the other day (amid news facebook has been eagerly handing our personal data, including private messages, to app developers): "I don't want to think this. But maybe blogs were better than social media. Please help me not think this. " Slow up there. Blogs were better than myspace. Blogs were better than friendster. And most are better than facebook. How funny when we're ashamed to think our own thoughts. Get your thoughts back with a *paper interrupt*. Really popular technologies were designed to be extensions of ourselves. Jotting an idea for a post even in illegible shorthand, onto a paper journal, severs the limb that is facebook. Don't jot the whole idea - making contact with the paper to scratch a hashmark revives awareness. Blogs are more individualized than facebook. Do people fear saying something bad about blogs on their own blog? Nope. Do people fear saying something bad about facebook on facebook? Very...