It's not that I like to fail. It's just that I know at some points I will... fail to understand.
There are some complex ideas I'm trying to piece together, and often a bit of traction leads to a nice succinct model that works for a while... which then turns brittle when I share it with others who know things I don't.
I don't like failing - I mean, I hate it, you know? But I try to not avoid it too much. It's a great way to learn and grow.
So I want to speed up the cycle by getting my ideas out there quicker. I've been a writer in some form for half my life, and I want a proper outlet. I'll proceed from the premise that I have some expertise but am no expert.
The Concept
consol-distrib = (Tech | Food) / Wealth ?
The Backstory
I recently moved to the Bay Area from Cleveland, for a lot of reasons.
Food & Cleveland
In Cleveland the last three years, most of my work related to local food systems. One of the major themes there is the value in supporting a large number of small producers and developing small-scale distribution networks that serve the local economy. I started paying attention to that aspect of the good food movement about five years ago, and it seems to really be catching on in various places across the country.
That said, I'm pretty sure during that time the food industry as a whole has gotten more consolidated, as that trend was already well underway. In some ways I suppose that's good. Now there's a Whole Foods five minutes away from me, and I can get all types of local produce and an environmentally-less-destructive version of just about whatever food I want. And some might even (begrudgingly) say that Wal-Mart's organic offerings can trump WFM's, at a much lower price point due to their humming-but-allegedly-exploitative distribution machine.
What to support can be confusing, but at least there are a lot of options and an increasing amount of information. Due to my work in this area and the impetus behind that, I have my biases - which I'll attempt to admit as much as possible. And given the change in environs, I think it's a good time to revert back to the center and approach things with a more agnostic mind, so I'm going to give that a shot.
Tech & Silicon Valley
In the Bay Area people care a lot about food, but it seems what's on everybody's mind here is tech. I've been reading these great articles about how it's good for individuals and smaller organizations to make use of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. (all based in SV, btw) but of primary importance to get traffic flowing to content on their own websites. (On a meta- level I'm trying to heed that advice in creating this blog. Yes, I'm starting it with Blogger, because that's what I've been using since 2003 - but I'm sure I'll transition to something I have more control over in due time.)
Partially the concern here is that by entrusting your content to SaaS, you have to accept that you might lose it someday.
The issue is also that by essentially creating content for these monolithic sites you're fueling their economic success because they have serious, scaled-up monetization in place (well, except Twitter I guess). If you generate enough interest, shouldn't you find some way to be able to reap those benefits yourself by controlling your own content and bringing people to your domain to find it?
Also there's something of an aesthetic concern - it might be preferable to continue having a vastly differentiated web with endless variety, rather than everything be blue and few other bubbly colors on a predominantly white background.
That said, I ain't tryin'a hate. Google and Facebook and the others are pretty freakin' awesome, are they not? I'm perpetually amazed by what they enable me do that wasn't even imaginable a decade ago, let alone possible. And for free.
The Introface
So what I'm observing is a parallel in these two areas I know and love. Many ways you look at it, the gap between the consolidated and the distributed is widening.
As such the wealth is getting concentrated, geographically. The Bay Area is teeming with the extensions of monetary wealth deftly culled from other regions. Cleveland is still hemorrhaging cash - but more and more realizing that wealth isn't just monetary and sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and grow your own.
I have some leanings but also a great deal of agnosticism. And so it begins...
