The Web We Want
I was supposed to be in San Diego this week for the Museum Computer Network conference, but business called me away. Here’s my Ignite talk, The Web We Want, composed with both the news of the day (fake news, propaganda on Facebook) and the rhythm of N.W.A.’s Express Yourself stuck in my head. I produced this video facsimile as a self-contained all-in-one production to try to give a sense of the moment — of being on stage with and for my people.
It’s a bit of a sequel to the last MCN Ignite talk, Jack the Museum, given in 2012.
Jack the Museum asked us to reach outside the constrictive idioms of traditional museum practice to seek greater impact in the world. Now, seven years later, with the humanistic vision of the Internet and the Web under threat, the Web We Want asks us to fight to reclaim the positive values of a digitally connected world.
Good luck tonight Nathan, Effie, Alison, Andrew, Beth, Koven and Nik — I’ll be with you in spirit, sending you all good vibes from somewhere over the Atlantic! Cheers!! https://conference.mcn.edu/2019/Ignite.cfm
Here’s the script (and an annotated version is here as a .pdf).
Hey I’m Mike; Cheers! Tonight I’m in absentia.
Talking to you across a digital connection.
Broadcasting from my trusty cyber station,
My code, copper, glass, and silicon creation.
Yeah I love the web — and it’s our baby.
And many-of-us are insider spiders that can ride her, maybe.
Or are we flies that come around … get stuck and eaten?
That web’s a sticky place now, and that smilin’ spider we be greetin.
What am I talkinabout? Well you may know me, Willis.
May know the things I care about I think will kill us.
May know the scope, scale, and speed-lovin man I am.
May know the green-eggs-and-ham lovin Sam-I-am.
I look out my windows and I see a shit-show.
If you log-in, or blogging with your noggin there’s a quid-pro-quo.
So let me take you through the categoric history.
To sweep the evils of these platforms to the dustbin of our history.
Facebook, Insta, YouTube, and Twitter.
I loved them, but these days I’d use them for kitty litter.
Flush them right down the pot — yeah, I’m pretty bitter.
They stealin’ from us like a Ben Franklin counterfeiter.
Facebook? It aided a genocide. A genocide. A genocide.
Facebook? It aided a genocide.
Yeah, they did that, and people died.
‘But we’re too big to mod-er-ate on-line activity.’
That’s a laugh! Facebook you could have the proclivity
To care about people and values and civility,
And redirect some of your vaunted corporate creativity
To make common sense solutions that work for all humanity.
Hate is not a fair choice ‘tween free speech, profit, and inanity.
Grow a spine and learn from those who’ve learned to love their community.
Weave a web of love and trust like RPG and Ravelry.
YouTube, oh, don’t get me started.
I love this platform but then they departed
The land of common, objective civic decency,
When they give aid and comfort those who spread conspiracy .
Twitter, hell, it’s a travesty,
How harassment and abuse is right there for all to see.
It’s not convenient to care when your mistress is a business model,
That makes you into every troll and dictator’s mollycoddle.
Google, aw, where to start?
They’ve turned exploitation of privacy into an art.
Micro-targeting, tracking, and ruthless data aggregation,
Reduce life-changing choices to an algorithmic calculation,
Blurring our lives into a smear of ruthless averages.
When they work they work but when they don’t who pays the damages?
Not people like me, white, straight, schooled, and privileged.
The grievous harm they cause to the powerless and poor can be unlimited.
So don’t tell me it don’t affect you.
Don’t affect those you met and those who beget you.
“Come into my parlor” say we spiders to the flies outside.
Hey, everybody goes there, why not? Don’t worry ‘bout the sticky side.
I think it’s a matter of owning up to consequence.
We all ask our global family to play here, and at great expense,
We burnish the street cred’ of dot coms with our edifice,
And risk harm to our community while we’re being generous.
Microsoft, Apple, and the Amazon crew.
ISP’s and the mobile’s are part of this too.
They claim public good, civic virtue, in their soundbites,
But when push comes to shove will they shove the Benjamins or human rights?
Oh bruh and sis, I almost forgot.
Elections and fake news are what we begot.
Remember that thing with Cambridge Analytica?
Well how’ you feelin’ about the current situation politica’?
Not so good? Huh — well me neither.
Catastrophic atmospheric carbon’s rising in the ether,
And just when we all must be connected, fast, and democratic,
The web we need is rotting, unacceptable-ly problematic.
Are we going to let 7 billion people live and love on a Web that’s autocratic?
Where the values of decency and common good make the dot-com’s panic?
Where the captains of Silicon Valley are running manic?
Piloting our commons to an iceberg like their own Titanic?
To transcend greed. Avarice. The fecklessness of feckless pricks,
We’re going to have to work as one, renegotiate some politics.
Boycott, cajole, write those letters band together,
Take a stand, take a risk, take the streets hell bent for leather.
This heart, these beats from this spider-web practitioner.
This time, these rhymes bustin’ from this long-distance exhibitioner
This urgency this planet this community can get get it done.
The web we want’s the dream we got if we spin our silk together, connected and strong.
[Updated 29 November 2019 to include link to annotated notes and link to official MCN version of the video.]