A reflection on GenAI in the shadow of technocracy

It’s difficult to leverage technical tools when everything lays on shifting sands owned by billionaires donating money to fascists.

When I was working for corporate America a year ago, in the years preceding, there was an enormous push for everyone to start using our enterprise AI tool to sharpen our writing, to strengthen and standardize our reports and documentation. The goal was to ease everyone’s workload with copy that was easier to digest, more compelling, more engaging. In simultaneous efforts to increase metrics and reduce headcount, everyone jumped on board to increase productivity. In time this sowed doubt in everyone natural ability. Should everything be run through these tools to ensure the right polish, the right “oomph”? While everyone was trying to deliver their “best” they were actually undermining their own abilities and proving themselves replaceable.

This has been happening across the country, and it’s creating the most turmoil in hiring processes. Companies use AI to screen resumes (often with inaccurate results), they even use AI to conduct screening interviews. But they are increasingly using tools to detect the use of AI by applicants and then use that to discredit them. It’s a cost-saving strategy when hiring departments use it – but represents a power imbalance when others are disqualified for doing the same. Throughout the industry there are no clear guidelines, expectations, or guardrails.

Worse still, readers have caught on to the tell tale sign of AI use in copy. Beyond the famous em-dash (which precedes AI and punishes legitimate authors who use it properly), there are certain common conventions and a certain cadence that reveals popular tool use. There are also a number of new tools available (for subscription of course) that promise to detect AI writing. Many are now reverting to analogue tools and processes as they struggle to adapt to this competitive and fickle environment. Will this result in writing output that is slower and clunkier in order to prove authenticity? Will this negatively impact “productivity metrics”? Or will only those who are disenfranchised economically be held to the analogue standard? It’s a chaotic time in many ways these days; this is just one more log on the dumpster fire.

But let’s return to two large elephants in the room, one that I touched on in the beginning. One: there’s currently a boycott brewing of ChatGPT for the massive donations OpenAI’s co-president has sent to Trump. Two: the disastrous impact that GenAI data centers have had on local water and energy resources.

I don’t have an easy conclusion or neat and tidy next steps. If I ran this piece through GenAI for optimization and restructuring it might come back with something pithy and punchy – but it also could flatten my overall voice and derail my intentions. These paragraphs could also end up sounding like the dozens we see regularly on LinkedIn.

These impacts were never my intention when I wanted to leverage these tools to just refine awkward transitions or clunky passages. Even with the best of prompts there’s a tendency for GenAI to dilute the voice and agency of authors. These tools can also be beguiling, flattering, and so incredibly helpful – which is dangerously attractive to writers dealing with critical, unsupportive employers or readers. But the trade-off is the weakening of one’s own instincts, creative judgement, and voice – and in this current environment that could be intellectually and culturally disastrous.

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Notes:

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Retail’s Quiet Revolution

How online side‑businesses are reshaping survival strategies today

I was in a funk earlier today, doom‑scrolling online and reading about the extent to which global relations and the value of the dollar have been destabilized by the current administration. Inflation and exchange-rate shifts have eroded purchasing power by 10% in 2025. The effect of this is being felt across both the US domestically and with expats abroad.

Since the late 00’s, U.S. economics have gotten really bad – as I do my regular shopping, and observe people and the environments – I wonder how many will survive. I see people working retail jobs who look like they previously worked in offices. Every day I hear about tech and other white‑collar lay-offs.

Thinking back to the the boom era of the late ’90s through the mid‑00s, I remember an era of giant retail enterprises. There were “megastores,” and “wow centers”—glitzy media megaplexes with enormous video screens playing the top music videos, magazine racks spanning 100 ft, and everyone drinking these giant new things called frappuccinos while buying CK One cologne.

In recent years larger chain stores have been closing. When you walk into one, it’s often run‑down and nearly empty, with maybe three employees handling returns or transactions you can’t complete online. There are many forces to blame for this – monopolies like Amazon gobbling up market share. Then private equity and hedge fund companies come in the liquidate the rest. Profits are funneled to CEOs, executives, stockholders, and everyone else loses their job and their retirement. The executives move on to the next companies.

I was at a chain office-supply store shredding some paper. At the register stood a tall trans woman with long dark hair. Ahead of me in line was a young neurodivergent person dressed much younger than her age, visibly stimming and bouncing with energy. The cashier greeted her warmly, chatting as if with an old friend, and I found myself wondering what their lives and futures might look like.

Inclusive stores aren’t just being kind—they’ve become holding spaces for people shut out of traditional career ladders. But they rarely provide living wages, and there’s no guarantee the store itself will survive long enough to sustain them. I’ve seen this before. One of my favorite jobs in the 1990s was working as a book buyer for the Virgin Megastore. When corporate centralized purchasing and stripped the role of autonomy, I left. Not long after, the chain shut down entirely.

As if by serendipity, I overheard the lady at the register mentoring the shopper on managing an online shop and on affiliate marketing. She mentioned that a friend with their online shop earns more in a month than she does in a year. While of course none of that happens overnight, it dawned on me that this generation isn’t willing to settle for the low wages of retail, nor are they pinning their hopes on expensive degrees and office jobs—both paths have shown their risks and failures. What I’m witnessing isn’t just economic decline—it’s a quiet shift in how marginalized people are stitching together survival through inclusion, informality, and digital micro-economies as traditional institutions fail them.

This generation is doing its best to hustle online, independently. But I also don’t see this as a silver bullet, and I’m not sure how sustainable it is. It still feels temporary. Algorithms replace bosses, platforms replace employers, volatility replaces stability. These people seem hopeful – but I believe we need a stronger and more just and equitable economy for all. Whether people want to work in smaller stores, as independent business owners, or for larger cooperatives. People need real options—work with dignity, stability, and autonomy—not survival strategies optimized for investor extraction.

2020: Coming up for air, albeit with a mask

It’s been a year since my last post and there were many reasons for that. First was work, developing taxonomies and controlled vocabularies for machine learning related projects. Then Covid happened, so I couldn’t go out to museums and galleries. Then I had to become a learning coach for my teen who is taking multiple AP classes online. Add to this ongoing efforts to stay current on technology and knowledge management by taking webinars, reading books, and going to virtual conferences. On top of all that, the hot mess that was American politics. It is Dec. 1st and I have finally come up for air – albeit with a mask.

I will do my best to re-cap and document the beta launch of Austin’s EAST online studio tour in a second post. It happened a couple weekends ago and unfortunately overlapped with an online conference so I was not able to attend in real time, but I will do my best to document for posterity.

After this I will try something new. All this time I have been tracking and posting links on Twitter for a variety of topics: online museum resources, digital humanities, digital preservation, open access courses, ethical AI, Asian visual culture and literature, taxonomy, ontology, linked data, and more. I’d like to attempt once a week to compile and curate these into newsletter type posts.

Once a month I will do my best to safely find a way to go out and look at art and review it. I will perhaps also make a post once a month looking at what local exhibitions are currently open for view and will share safety notes and tips, as well as share what online resources are available for those wanting to stay at home.

I will also work toward making occassional posts promoting resources and options for those wanting to live a more eco, sustainable, plastic-free lifestyle as that is top of mind as well.

I’d like to also share and promote local, small businesses in featured posts, pulling in photos from my Instagram account.

2021 will begin in just one more month – and I am feeling very hopeful that we will get past all this.

Art|Tech|Eco|Culture

Will the early 90’s be lost like tears in the rain?

I saw on Twitter a poignant post recalling the early days of the internet, how there is little record of it all due to defunct websites and bit rot…describing it as all lost, like tears in the rain.

It’s a reference to the death monologue given by the dying android Batty in Bladerunner. Reflecting upon early 90’s and 80’s indie culture, small businesses owned by Gen-X shopkeepers, many of these disappeared as well, during waves of recession and rent increases. There was no Yelp back then, no local foodie magazines propped up by investors. There might have been a fleeting reference or xeroxed photo in a 50 cent zine, but beyond that this was a undocumented zeitgeist that disappeared before much could be recorded for posterity.

Decades of attention were showered upon Boomers and the 60’s. There were documentaries, retrospective exhibits. It pains me as a trained archivist that the punk to early 90’s era received comparatively sparse attention. Outside of noxious Newsweek articles about Generation X, where are the archives? Yes, there are musical documentaries and biographies, but outside of those that made it big, where are the digital records?

These days we have an excess of data due to millennials documenting everything with Instagram, Twitter, Yelp. It is impossible now to live and create without leaving a digital trace.

My generation spawned flyers, zines, diy comics, cassette mixed tapes, but how much has survived? If some had been been digitized, have them been tagged? Indexed? None of these records are searchable.

Online you can find thousands of iterations of viral memes from the last two years. It reminds of trying to read one’s social media news feed beyond yesterday. Online blogging platforms only show you posts from the last two weeks. What does this say about our value of history?

Many in my generation prided ourselves on being indie and underground, but much history was buried when bigger businesses took over and everyone went online. To counter historical homogeneity we need proof of the other narratives. Loft living did not begin with dot com tech workers for example, it started with artists living in unheated warehouses, filling giant open spaces with 50’s style kitchen furniture, Xmas lights, art school sculptures, graffiti and yes, code violations. There were cottage industries that sprung up around the late 80’s, early 90’s rave culture. Clothing, diners like Hell’s Kitchen on Haight St. that were as known for its collection of vintage toys hanging from the ceiling as for lack of service and cleanliness. I do not argue these factors (as well as drugs) did not contribute to this vanishing, but I mourn the lack of photos.

When I lived in Santa Cruz there was a small cafe across the street from a comic book store on Water St. The cafe owners were an older, quiet Gen X couple that reminded me of Kim Gordon and Michael Gira. They collected vintage, mid-century modern furniture and coffee mugs. They served Peet’s coffee in French presses. There were large art magazines around and 80’s era experimental art. I loved going there to escape the crowds of students and/or hippies elsewhere, but sadly they did not get enough traffic to survive. This was the other nail in the coffin for these special places, as the post-Reagan economy became more cut-throat, unique businesses had to play a numbers game or fail.

It makes me envious of Europeans, who not only experience businesses lasting a lifetime, but some have lasted over a century. I don’t have the space to explore the effect of this late Capitalist churn on the American culture and social psyche, but we basically have no permanence. Cafes and restaurants I took my son to when he was a toddler no longer exist and that’s just a handful of years. There used to be cafes and restaurants in my hometown that existed for 40-50 years. We’d meet there during holidays, it was a kind of psychic touch stone. A chance to step back into that stream in time. How can one go back ‘home’ when everything is gone?

Photographs help, telling stories help – but when there are no records and you no longer know anyone who remembers these places, what then?

This is what motivates archivists and historians.

Before you Instagram one more acai bowl or tumeric latte – go through your old zines, flyers, photos and digitize them. Upload them, tag them, GPS-tag photos of businesses that used to exist. Date-stamp them with the year, or best estimate. Don’t let these memories be lost like tears in the rain.

Art – Tech – Eco – Culture could save the 21st century

What does Art-Tech-Eco-Culture mean? It represents a convergence of design, political will, mobilization and creativity that just may thwart the most dire climate change predictions.

I haven’t written enough about eco topics lately, but they have weighing on my mind, especially this past year. If you’re like me, it’s been difficult to stay focused in 2017. Each day when I wake up like Dorothy Parker asking “What fresh hell is this?” What keeps me moving forward? Action plans and recognizing where positive changes ARE happening.

If we focus on the negative, things can look hopeless…but something positive DID happened this year. The election of Trump re-invigorated and mobilized everyone concerned about the environment, social justice, economic justice, and health. Realizing also how connected these concepts are is no longer an abstract. It has became obvious in memes spread by middle school kids. When 11 year olds are ‘woke’ to these ideas we’re getting somewhere. The shift IS happening.

In the past year with Trump administration attacks on climate science, environmental regulations, groups and concerned citizens have been organizing like never before. Through social media, blogs, and small businesses, interests in ways to save the planet have sky-rocketed. Trends that have been simmering since 2006 have exploded.

It couldn’t come any sooner – In just the past month we’ve had at least 3 devastating hurricanes, unprecedented flooding and out of control wildfires in the west. The warnings Al Gore gave years ago as a nightmarish but distant future, are happening right now.

So, what are these trends I’ve been seeing – in stores, documentaries, book-sales, product sales, on social media, in local legislation, in laws around the world? By themselves they may seem small or inconsequential – but they are driving real changes in industries and policies around the world. Companies are shifting investments and product strategies because of these trends. Citizens are speaking up and demanding new laws.

Rise in Recycling
- According to the EPA, disposal rates were down from 89% in 1980 to 53% in 2013.
- According to the American Chemistry Council, 6 billion pounds of plastic were recycled in 2014 alone.
- Other countries are in the lead compared to the US.
  - Planetaid.com has the following infographic

Plastic bag bans –Mother Nature Network has an interactive map of locales around the world that have banned plastic bags.

Rise of Tiny Homes
- Motivated by concerns over high rents, student loan bills and other debts
- Curbed.com offers a timeline of the rise of this movement.
- Right before the housing market crash the founder of Tumbleweed Homes had an appearance on Oprah. After the sub-prime mortgage crisis interest in Tiny Homes spikes.
- In 2014 HGTV debuts Tiny House Hunters.
Interest in Minimalism
- Growth in books and blogs on de-cluttering, simplifying, downsizing.
- Swap party movement – articles showed up in blogs, on Pinterest – now even Oprah, Women’s Day, Weight Watchers and Good Housekeeping are telling Americans how to host a clothing swap party.
  - The average American throws away 70 lbs. of clothing and accessories each year. Instead – go to swap parties with your bags of clothing, books, accessories, home items. Visit with friends over drinks, snacks. Go home with new treasures. Remainders go to local charities.
Sustainable Farming
- The Netherlands ,the second largest exporter of food in the world, employs techniques using 90% less water:
- Aquaponics – chemical free, it also uses a fraction of the water used in conventional agriculture.
- Permaculture – is about working with nature, not against it, to produce ‘permanent agriculture.’
Efforts to Reduce Food Waste
- Composting
  - City efforts with curb-size compost pickup – benefiting local farmers and restaurants. As of 5 years ago there were 90 cities around the U.S. with curb-side compost pickup.
  - Positive environmental impact in the form of carbon capture – farmers selling carbon credits to companies as they spread compost over their farm-land and grow cover crops.
  - Compost replenishes the soil – providing nutrients and healthy bio-organisms.
DIY movement
- Thanks to YouTube and other forms of social media, it’s become possible to move being consumerism to create for ourselves.
- Evolving into ‘Do it Together’ Bartering and communal efforts connect people and help share skills.
Growth of Veganism
- This is huge – with animal agriculture accounting for more global warming gasses than the transportation sector. Documentaries have been uncovering these links and how leading environmental groups have been bullied by these industries to keep this quiet.
- The documentary What the Health which aired on Netflix this year resulted in a spike of people waking up to the enormous impact that animal protein has on causing cancers, diabetes and heart disease. Moving to a plant-based diet will save countries billions of dollars in health care costs.
  - YouTube is filled with channels devoted to vegan and Indian cooking (curries are incredibly popular and healthy in the West due to migration and the anti-inflammatory health benefits of tumeric. Modern western diet is terribly inflammatory and drives most expensive, modern diseases). There are in fact many healthy properties to a number of Indian spices.
  - Instant Pot – The revolutionary new pressure cooker that has safely enabled working families to cook whole foods in a mere fraction of the time.
    - Books and social media groups on vegan instant pot cooking have also grown exponentially.
Decades of processed foods affect on Western gut bacteria has lead to an epidemic of immune disorders. This has spurred a movement toward reintroducing probiotics into our diets. (And I’m not talking about sugary, processed yogurt.)
- Popularity of kombucha
- Home fermenting (kombucha, kim chee, saurkraut)
  - This is a great gallon jar for brewing and fermenting kombucha.
  - This kit is super for for fermenting vegetables in mason jars.
- Making one’s own non-dairy yogurt
  - An Instant Pot can be used for this – or a yogurt maker.
Rise of interest in Yoga
- This has been politically contentious in some Muslim and Christian communities who have decried this as somehow converting people to Hinduism. In truth, Yoga is enormously prevalent across communities in the world, of many religions. Sikh practicioners, for example, are not Hindu. This fear is as weak an argument as thinking that Westerners using ‘Zen’ practices to de-clutter their homes will turn them into Buddhists. Or that the Japanese celebrating Christmas will turn into Christians. It hasn’t happened.
- In truth, the practice of yoga (and meditation!) across the world, among prison populations, urban schools, veterans suffering from PTSD, or refugees suffering from the traumas of war – has lead to tremendous healing.

Reflections on Chef’s Table – Massimo

I was watching the first episode of Chef’s Table, on Massimo‘s Italian restaurant, how he has become a national treasure, despite early on being considered treasonous by traditionalists. His creative energy and artistry is palpable; reminding me of the Italian Engineering professors I encountered while working administration in a Computational Engineering department. The professor I supported was from New York and would host professors from Italy, Spain, Argentina, Norway. They would often go to local modern Italian trattorias and coffeehouses for brainstorming sessions. They were some of the most energetic, imaginative people outside of artists I ever met.

I try not to delve into politics on this blog, but I am very concerned. We may be losing our grip on the very engine that made America a leader in science, technology and innovation with our current administration. There’s a great three part program on Netflix right now about three cities….Vienna 1908, Paris in the 1928’s and New York in the 1951’s. Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds. New York took over the spot as the center for new art and creativity in large part because of the great European diaspora after WWII. We can thank this for the introduction of cafes to America and the energy of New York unlocked the potential of an entire generation of artists and writers. Similarly, Americans brought enormous creativity to Paris during the 1920’s, as did artists from Japan.

There is a growing ferment in the world that would have countries lock themselves down, despite the fact that acts of terrorism are more often occurring with radicalized, mentally ill citizens. Economic anxiety and policies of austerity are causing birth rates to drop…triggering fears amid white Europeans and Americans that their time is waning, giving rise to supremacist movements. Yet little attention is paid to labor issues, living wage issues, mental health issues, education issues.

Populations are electing governments that promise to close countries off from immigrants while they continue to starve supportive sectors like education, heath, housing, sciences, the arts. All these efforts fuel the fires that could extinguish Western Civilization and its potential rather than preserve it….or develop it! Where will the next great center of science and the arts be? Could be Dubai, Oslo or Hong Kong.

We devote our budget to fighting wars on ‘terrorism’…but without support for infrastructure, science, housing, arts, education….where will our next engineers, artists or talented chefs come from…what are we fighting for?

Colonial Hong Kong influenced Cyberpunk Dystopia

When asked to imagine a post-industrial, urban dystopia, Westerners may summon images from Bladerunner, Neuromancer, Akira, Neo-Tokyo, or Ghost in a Shell. Backdrops of crumbling hyper-density, juxtapositions of poverty and neon, advanced technology and decaying urban infrastructure.

We may imagine humans living like colonies of ants within anarchic, decentralized structures covered in graffiti, filled with crime and the smells of laundry and street food. If asked to point to exact cultural locations, we would think of Tokyo or Hong Kong based upon the films, anime and books mentioned above.

What is it about those cities that brought those qualities to mind, especially as these are already historicized, locked away in 1980’s cyberpunk nostalgia? These cities are now likely cleaner, filled with high rises instead of slums, Still, these images persist due to the powerful work of artists, writers, photographers and filmmakers. Where did it all come from? What were the roots of this post-industrial dystopia and why does it still touch people? What meaning does it all hold for us now in the 21st century…a time of luxury condos and sterile interiors?

Liam Wong, a graphic designer in the video game industry has come to enjoy fame with his photographs of Tokyo on Instagram. Citing influence from Ridley Scott‘s Bladerunner he tells of how he fell in love with Tokyo as his romantically filtered nighttime neon photographs attest.

While looking at his work I reflect on my favorite post-war Japanese photographers who also photographed Tokyo at night, capturing this urban, dreamlike underbelly.

Photographers like Daido Moriyama, or the terribly under-rated Osamu Kanemura whose disjointed, black and white images of post-industrial, post-war Tokyo couldn’t embody the dystopic imagination more. With rare collections with names like Shockhammer or Spider’s Strategy, they capture the darker, industrial aesthetic that is so different than works on Paris for example.

Tokyo emerged from devastation after the war and built itself up in a hyper-modernizing pace as an amalgamation of both industry and pre-modern, Japanese culture. What we in the west see as an exotic juxtaposition actually carries deeper resonance for those in Asia.

This brings us to another city, navigating between modernization and cultural retention: Kowloon City in Hong Kong. Japanese photographer Ryuji Miyamoto captured this infamous locale in his works from 1987. Renowned for his photographs of demolished buildings he carried his expertise at capturing in black and white the detailed layering and texture of industrial decay. Kowloon City, as seen in this footage or Japanese explorers is really interesting as the creative team highlights attitudes urban Japanese have toward space, density and collections that differ from those in the West who might focus primarily on blight, neglect, and code violations.

A longer documentary explains the history of Kowloon City, as one rooted in Chinese resistance to British rule, of creating a self-sufficient city of sorts, albeit one lacking in first world amenities. However, Kowloon City holds powerfully nostalgic value for many 20th century East Asians, as their worlds underwent changes from Colonialism and growing Capitalism. It was an incubator in many ways, a place of liminal transitions, a blurring of post-war ‘village’ with the dark underbelly of industrial urbanism.

When Hong Kong gained its independence and became prosperous, Kowloon City became a blemish from its past, and the government soon set upon demolishing it over a period of many years. Prior to its erasure many architectural and design students from Japan as well as New York rushed to document what they could of this unique walled city. Its impact upon the modern imagination persisted, soon providing a backdrop from everything from kung fu crime movies to science fiction and video games.

The anime artist Mamoru Oshii cites it as the basis for his imaginative backdrop in Ghost in a Shell. The Japanese were so intrigued by Kowloon City that they created a three-story theme park in Tokyo replicating everything they could to preserve its cultural and architectural trace. The documentary footage linked here contains interviews with former residents, historians, artists and designers, all testifying to impact that city had upon post-colonial consciousness and memory.

Future of Gaming and Digital Scholarship

“The Most Dangerous Gamer”

“Never mind that they’re now among the most lucrative forms of entertainment in America, video games are juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy. At least that’s what Jonathan Blow thinks. But the game industry’s harshest critic is also its most cerebral developer, a maverick bent on changing the way we think about games and storytelling. With his next release, The Witness, Blow may cement his legacy—or end his career. In a multibillion-dollar industry addicted to laser guns and carnivorous aliens, can true art finally flourish.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/?single_page=true

“I think the mainstream game industry is a &%$&-up den of mediocrity,” he told me. “There are some smart people wallowing in there, but the environment discourages creativity and strength and rigor, so what you get is mostly atrophy.”

Myself – I’m into museum studies, digital curation, digital archiving, physical archives….and to a lesser extent gaming. But I was once very hooked. It’s the storytelling, participation and interaction, problem-solving, exploration, information organizing and collecting…all those drives are powerful not just for learning – but for collaborative learning and knowledge-production.

While there is a brilliant but lonely genius to the games of Jonathan Blow…there is something different at play with the studio – http://www.secondstory.com/ – something that connects to and inspires cognitive activity beyond solitary puzzle-solving…

When I think of what is stored in archival repositories like the Harry Ransom Center – and so many other museums – I think about the possibilities of bridging the power of interactive ‘gaming’ with the exploration of Art and Archives. When I recall powerful museum exhibits that transformed me… I think, what can be done to carry gaming further? I am certain that we are only at the beginning, the first steps of realizing what these techological ‘toys’ and digitization methods can ‘do’ for our creative records. We are in an age where there is a simultaneous need to preserve and to integrate knowledge so that we can solve so many of humanity’s problems. The evolution of gaming may hold the key.

Techno-diversity: toward an ecology of (social) networks

In debating the brewing “war” between Facebook, Twitter and GooglePlus it dawned on me that these services are really rather different. It would make greater sense for them to focus on and develop their strengths rather than race to homogenize themselves into identically mediocre platforms.

Twitter does something very unique and the kind of data dynamic that results from Twitters model, the way in which data flows in its network, is very different than that of Facebook because Facebook has primarily been a “walled garden.” With the advent of groups, news pages, fan/business/institutional pages, this has become less so…but the interaction model is still very different than that of Twitter. Facebook offers its non-person content files a different sense of “place” – something more static that can more easily collect threads of user content. Twitter is “faster” and far more impermanent. This is not a better or a worse thing, just different.

Google Plus looks to offer a potentially unique blending of the two. Perhaps this is part of what Facebook is upset about….but one of GooglePlus’ strongest draws so far is its superior social filtering features – the intuitive and usable “Circles.” See, users liked the ability to post within a walled garden…but we wanted to create rooms. Facebook’s “lists” (among many other privacy features) were labryinthian nightmares. But Facebook still has a world of content on there that it should develop ways to respect and protect (enabling searchability, the ability to tag and archive content) rather than trying to run after other services going “Me too!” and cursing the ingenuity of others. If Facebook doesn’t want to go the way of Yahoo’s mistreatment of Flickr or Delicious….it should pull its CEOs out of the parties and think hard about the Information Curation questions from the point of view of its Users (not its commercial sponsors).

I think there could be lots to learn from other network models that had advantages, but suffered executive hubris and neglect. MySpace was a great site for small businesses and musicians. Why? Let’s think about this…what could they do on MySpace that they could not do on Facebook? I’ll touch on some of this later in this post, but feel free to chime in.

Tribe.net…..There is a great amount of content on Tribe.net. What were the drawbacks in terms of Information Architecture….how did Tribe.net not succeed? I am not talking about funding or policies..I’m talking primary about Information Architectural models. What was it about Tribe.net that made it “free-er” seeming than Facebook? What was off-putting?

And then there’s Livejournal. I could devote an entire post at least to the lessons we can learn from LJ. There are many great features it has. There are surely drawbacks as well.

My primary point however is that all of these need not try to be identical to each other. Yes, they could learn a lot from each other…but it is also good to have choice. I enjoy Twitter in a different way than Facebook or GooglePlus. If the latter two could evolve to pick up some of the archiving/search/usability features of LiveJournal….or allow for content promotion (while respecting artists’ content-ownership rights) like MySpace or Flickr….or allow for deep levels of cultural content like Tribe.net….We could really enrich the online cultural environment in ways that 1) in two months or two years content won’t be lost and 2) users could retain ownership of (or at least more easily control) their content rather than be merely providing free consumer research and promotional images and copy.