I’ve been putting this off for far too long. It’s been well over a year that I’ve been looking for an outlet to share my thinking and reading on how the internet is changing human communication and collaboration. But I kept delaying diving in. I wanted more than just a blog – I wanted a “site” that could act as a resource for others who shared my interests to discover the many thinkers who are doing great work in these areas. But after far too much procrastinating I’ve just decided to start writing.
I do hope to redesign the site in the not-too-distant future to make it more than just a blog. In the meantime I’ll just post stuff and organize later.
What I’m interested in: the economics of open source, the role of the internet in facilitating human collaboration and information production, read/write culture, and the future of news and of the public sphere. That’s the short list. Hopefully, as I share thoughts on some of the stuff I’ve been reading it will become more clear where I’m coming from.
Lastly, one of the major sources of blog-launch procrastination was in picking a URL/name. I finally took the suggestion ‘beyond the times’ because it suggests the prospect of a radically different public sphere / news-ecosystem, and because, as opposed to ‘behind the times’, it suggests a focus on the future. I don’t mean to reference a future without any specific organization or news medium and certainly am not making a reference to The New York Times which happens to be my favorite news source. The reference is general, referring to a model of news, embodied by daily print, that most everyone agrees is undergoing radical transformation.
Also, I have to get around to changing the tagline from “The Internet and the Public Sphere” to “The Internet, Information, and the Public Sphere”. But for now I won’t let these things deter me and am just going to get started. Finally.
beyond the times 