A Kinder… Gentler Internet

I miss the internet.

Not the slow modems… not the terrible websites… not the dancing animated GIFs… I miss the “idea” of it. And, I guess, that’s why I am still here… plugging away at the version of it that I loved so much. What’s the saying… “write the book you want to read…” Starting around 2000… there was something wonderfully human about the internet. Someone discovered something interesting and linked to it… someone had an idea and wrote about it… someone built a website about some obscure passion because they wanted to find the other weirdoes in the world who cared about it too. It wasn’t better because I am feeling nostalgic (I am)… it was better because it felt authored. You could “sense” the person behind the content (spelling… grammar… warts and all). Their curiosity… their taste… their weirdness… their perspective.

As things commercialized… they also homogenized.

It seemed innocent enough… search optimization influenced what got written… social platforms used algorithms (not who we were connected to) to define distribution… analytics told us what “worked”… attention became more important than everything else… and then creators became content operations. Then came the mass media bum rush. Individuals became brands… podcasts became television shows with elaborate sets, multiple cameras, producers, editors and entire systems designed to extract dozens of pieces of content from every conversation… and now AI can create more words, images, audio and video than any human could possibly consume.

Everything is content… content is everything.

As I was out for my Sunday morning stroll yesterday… I started to wonder if maybe that’s part of the problem. I consume an enormous amount of media. I read constantly… I listen… I watch… I follow rabbit holes. And increasingly, I find myself looking for something that can be surprisingly difficult to find… a person. Not a personal brand… not an optimized content strategy… not someone reverse-engineering what the algorithm wants today… not someone trying to build a media empire… an actual person with a point of view. And beyond that just something tangible… without the dollar hype… without the sales pitch.

My work here is starting to feel strange against the common model.

I still like to link to things. That sounds almost ridiculous to point out… but when did we stop linking? The hyperlink may be one of the most beautiful ideas the internet ever gave us. Here’s something interesting… go somewhere else… read it yourself… explore that space… discover another voice… fall down your own rabbit hole. Every week (along with Alistair Croll and Hugh McGuire), I publish Six Links That Make You Think. They’re not even close to the six biggest stories of the week (far from it)… they’re six things that made us stop, think, question something or look at the world a little differently (and, most importantly, something we wanted to share with the other person). It’s a way to say, “Saw this… loved it… have you checked it out?” Sixteen-plus years on (having never missed a week), we’re still at it. I can’t tell you how much joy it brings into my life.

I’ve also been podcasting every week since 2006 (20+ years).

No seasons… no giant production team… no elaborate studio… no sales and advertising machine wrapped around the conversation. It’s still mostly me (old school indie, as I like to say). I find someone I’m curious about… I research them… I read their words… I prepare… I sit in front of a microphone… we talk… I record, edit and publish it. Human voice to human voice. There’s still something a little like pirate radio about it that I love. Maybe it’s a crutch that’s holding the show back (I am open to exploring this and being wrong about my currently held beliefs). And, of course, that same philosophy runs through my writing, LinkedIn, my weekly radio conversations and the other places where I try to make sense of technology, business, media, culture and whatever strange collision between them has caught my attention.

It’s opinionated… it reflects my taste.

You may agree with me. You may think I’m completely wrong. Good. Because I’m increasingly convinced that taste and perspective become more valuable as content goes infinite. For decades, we’ve been building an internet around attention and “more.” More followers… more views… more frequency… much more content. I’m much more interested in intimacy. Can you still feel the human being on the other side? Did someone choose this because they believed it was worth sharing? Did someone spend time with the idea before asking for yours? Did someone make something because they wanted it to exist?

Maybe that’s the internet I miss… and maybe “miss” is the wrong word.

I’m not interested in going backwards. I want (and love) the extraordinary tools, access and possibilities we have now (hello AI!). I just don’t want to surrender the human side to get them. I’m looking for the independent voices… I like spending time with an idea… especially, the imperfections.

The new B2B is Brain To Brain.

That’s what I’m trying to create with the podcast… the writing… Six Links… my weekly radio conversations… even my keynote presentations. Not more content simply because the internet can hold it. Things I’ve thought about, cared about, questioned and decided were worth sharing.

Maybe you’re looking for more of that too?

If you are, follow along… subscribe… check in from time to time. Not because I need another follower or you need more content in your life. We probably both have enough of that.
But because maybe the way we get to a kinder… gentler internet isn’t by waiting for somebody to build it for us…

Maybe we find the people whose brains we want to spend some time with… and start there.

(I’m also getting tired of reading what I wrote and thinking to myself: “does this sound like AI could have written it?”)