- What’s digital independence?
We’ve become increasingly dependent on a shrinking number of digital platforms for our connection to others and understanding of the world. It’s a world dominated by the opposable nature of two unyielding political parties and filtered through the massive profiling efforts of Google and Facebook. Add the disinformation campaigns of hostile agents amplifying these polarizing conflicts and you’ve got one toxic brew of news feeds and search results.
These factors conspire to drive trust from the laws and institutions that stabilize and strengthen open societies. They also threaten the ability of curious and skeptical minds to seek their own path of knowledge discovery and draw their own conclusions, irrespective of who’s point of view is associated with which entrenched interest. The final unit calls for a reset, drawing from the practices set forth in the first six.
2. What did you enjoy most about writing the book?
That’s an easy one. Getting in touch, often for the first time, with the innovators who inspired the book through their code, their teaching, their design, and their thinking out loud philosophies for enabling a community sense of discovery and sharing. It was especially endearing to sing the praises of search engines and automation tools since discontinued due to an non-sustaining business model.
3. What was the most challenging part of the project?
Probably the hardest part was letting goal of any notion of timeliness. The search wheel never stops spinning. Even pretending to grab hold of it means being spun and flung out of control and knocked senseless by the unrelenting technological change. Then again, the lessons in these pages are not timed to any one vendor, tool, or interface, let alone code release. They will live on regardless of when the next big thing is dethroned by the after-the-next-biggest thing.
