Michael W. Dean
This chapter is a veritable manifesto on life. If you're wondering, "What the heck is this doing in a tech book?" well, feel free to ignore it. Alan and I have already delivered on the promise of the book title in the first 13 chapters, so consider this a free extra. But we believe that every how-to book should contain some "Why?" to make sure you use your new skills for good, never for evil.
Here you'll find words of encouragement, some sidewalk Zen on the art of living life (online and off), some talk about new things you can try going forward, and a little bit of a good ol' punk rock pep talk. This is the commencement speech that takes what you're doing on the 'Tube and rockets it beyond…into the future of your life, and the lives of every citizen of the planet Earth.
Alan and I talked a little before about "not making YouTube your world." I want to tell you why you shouldn't and, moreover, how you can change the world and become part of the global community, using YouTube as a jumping-off point.
You know how in every horror movie and sci-fi movie, one character is the portent? This is the grizzled old miner who says, "You youngsters shouldn't go camping out there tonight. It's the anniversary of the night them other kids went missing. Folks 'round these parts say a witch done ate 'em!" Or it's the crazy scientist who says, "We should listen to these signals from space! They're a warning! These aliens are trying to tell us to change our ways! And our DNA!" In this chapter, that old guy is me.
The portent seems like a nut in the first act, but by the third act, all the characters, and the audience, are saying "Maybe that crazy old guy was right!"
Gather 'round the fire, kick up your feet, put on your "open-mindedness hats," and listen while "Ol' Grandpa Punk" regales you with tales about "When I was your age…," what that means now, and how you can use it going forward. Since I'm old and you're not, you're going to be alive long after I'm worm food. And I don't have any kids, so I'd love to pass something on to somebody.
Social networking provides websites to people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a computer.
Social networking is trumpeted as the "wave of the future" by companies like News Corporation (which owns many magazines, newspapers, and Fox Broadcasting Company). It's "the next big thing" because companies who own the old media now also own the new media. For instance, Fox owns MySpace.
Social networking is big with companies because the users create the content for free. They don't have to be paid. That's the boon to corporations in Web 2.0. Back in Web 1.0, companies paid people to create the content. I worked at a company in 1997 in San Francisco called catalogs2go.com. The company paid me (and about 50 other writers) 30 bucks an hour, full-time, to read printed catalogs and summarize them for its up-and-coming website, which never launched. The company went under before it went online. The domain catalogs2go.com is currently for sale, and it has been for sale for a decade. catalogs2go.com was not alone in this dot-bomb bust. Thousands of companies lost millions of dollars each. It was the end of Web 1.0.
In Web 2.0, you create the content. Companies have to pay only programmers, not content creators, and much of the programming work is outsourced to India at 1/10th the cost of work done in the United States. In Web 2.0, your brilliant work is competing with millions of other people producing brilliant work, all barking to be heard, while you have to juggle with the terms of service imposed by the company to keep all those users somewhat civilized.
I also don't like business-oriented social networking sites. I have no need for them. I'm a well-employed writer and professional filmmaker. I get more work offers than I can take on, and I do not have a profile on LinkedIn, IMDB Pro, or any similar sites. If people want to find me, they can. Start on Google, and within a few clicks, you've got my email address. This is how I get a lot of the freelance work I do…people searching me and finding me. You can learn to be this much in demand too.
Everything you do, in any medium, for free or for pay, helps increase the value of your "brand," that is, the value of your name and your resumé as someone people want to hire. This is why I spend most of my time online working on my own sites, not on other people's sites. I own my sites. They can't go away and I control the terms of service. My blogs are hosted on my own server, not on some social networking blogging site, as are my podcasts and most of my film and book information. I can't be banned. I can, however, ban people who irk me.
I've heard it said that the Internet is responsible for a decline in literacy—that people don't bother with proper spelling and punctuation because the Internet is so immediate. Statistics actually show that overall literacy rates are not going down. What I think is happening is that we're just seeing more poor writing because of the Internet.
Back when it cost money to publish, to print words on paper, all written media was authored by professionals, edited by professionals, and published and marketed by professionals. It narrowed the field of what was available, but at least the technical quality was decent. Ever since the World Wide Web debuted in 1992, most writing is written by anybody, edited by nobody, and published by a mouse click. Just because everyone can have their thoughts read around the world doesn't mean they should. Or at least I don't need to read them.
Web 2.0 has an amazing potential to unite, educate, and foster change, but it's been cut off at the knees by corporations who want to remove humans from the marketing equation and just have machines automatically dock credits from our bank accounts. They want to pick pockets by remote control. At the rate things are going, eventually the buyer (or "victim") will be eliminated.