Want a totally fresh take on tech journalism?

Behold: an interviewer who knows enough about DNS to conduct an informative interview with the inventor of DNS. welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/bt…
Great work by @sarveshmathi on this interview.

Really illustrates some key concepts, including (a) that technically literate people should be writing & reporting on tech, (b) there’s plenty of talent out there internationally we haven’t tapped, and (c) we can do so much better.
This whole series of articles is some of the best tech journalism I’ve ever seen. Because it’s not all gossip columns and funding rounds. The reader actually learns something. It’s like @QuantaMagazine but for tech. welcometothejungle.com/en/collections…
One thing that jumps out at me from those pieces: social media isn’t the only factor in reducing the quality of tech writing.

Once technology became the “tech industry” & worth billions, many people got into it just for money. Coverage gradually dumbed down to focus on funding.
Note: deleted & reposted two tweets in this thread because included slightly wrong link.

The “Coder Stories” link is the right one. Take a look at the screenshots below to see an alternative vision of what tech writing might look like. Informative & fun! welcometothejungle.com/en/collections…

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More from @balajis

1 Nov
YIMBY: no point in reforming SF anymore, just go remote

Chinese FDI into the US: was rising fast, then fell off a cliff

International travel: 2019 may be generational high water mark

Restaurants, bars, concerts: the Western physical leisure economy was soaring, now hurting
Note that the FDI turnaround did start after 2016, but this year’s events have made it highly unlikely that it will bounce back in the same way. Image
One thing I’m reminded of is @benedictevans’ point that something reaches its final and perfect form right before it is completely disrupted.

Hard to top the options for fun, food, and travel for 2010s urban Americans. A giant amusement park of wine bars & fancy tacos.
Read 4 tweets
24 Oct
The future is Communist Capital vs Woke Capital vs Crypto Capital.
Each represents a left/right fusion that’s bizarre by the standards of the 1980s consensus.

It’s PRC vs MMT vs BTC.
Communist Capital is the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s capitalism checked by the centralized power of the Chinese state, as pithily summarized here. quillette.com/2020/10/10/is-…
Read 5 tweets
23 Oct
Media corporations are slowly realizing that leverage has shifted.

You don’t need to give free content to Bezos, Sulzberger, or Murdoch employees to get the word out anymore.

Just build your own audience, and go direct if you have something to say. cjr.org/public_editor/…
You no longer need to pay a toll to a media middleman to reach an audience. You don’t need them at all.

“The internet...destroyed one of the media’s most important sources of power: being the only place that could offer access to an audience.” cjr.org/public_editor/…
The new vanity metric is vanity media. You simply do not need legacy media coverage to reach an audience. It’s junk traffic.
Read 5 tweets
23 Oct
Absolutely agree that workers should share in the upside of these platforms.

But a state that fails at basic functions like police, fire, public health, education, sanitation isn’t capable of competent regulation. That’s why AB5 was a disaster.

There is a better way, though...
I’m very sympathetic to @ljin18 and @dumplicious’s points about making sure workers share upside.

Had Uber been able to give equity to all 1M drivers, perhaps they’d be a $100B company with $50B owned by drivers at ~$50k/driver.

A happier and economically aligned workforce.
So what eventually happens is that all these platforms get turned into crypto protocols.

Every rider and driver now share in the upside. And due to encryption, voluntary transactions between two parties can no longer be surveilled and interdicted by the state.
Read 4 tweets
11 Oct
The three most complex pieces of software are operating systems, web browsers, and blockchains.
These reflect the on-disk, online, and on-chain eras respectively. From desktop to internet to crypto.
A web browser is after all essentially an OS. It has an interpreter, you write apps for it, and so on. ChromeOS took this to its natural conclusion.

A blockchain is also an OS. It has a compiler, you write apps for it, and so on. What will take this to its natural conclusion?
Read 6 tweets
11 Oct
A fundamental issue is that viral content tends to be provocative. In theory it's possible to change the incentive structure, as shown by these two graphs.
facebook.com/notes/mark-zuc…
Right now, the "policy line" is determined by community reaction or manual platform review. So there are humans in the loop.

However, if FB or Twitter's databases were open source, anyone could try ML to try predicting virality & sentiment for a post. Probably some signal there.
Of course, the problem with ML-based pre-publication content review by FB/Twitter is that these are for-profit American companies put in the role of soft censoring millions.

I think many people there have good intent, but as folks have noted the potential for abuse is obvious.
Read 6 tweets

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