{"id":2196,"date":"2018-11-11T20:45:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-11T20:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/?p=2196"},"modified":"2018-11-11T20:45:22","modified_gmt":"2018-11-11T20:45:22","slug":"a-conversation-with-ben-werdmuller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/a-conversation-with-ben-werdmuller\/","title":{"rendered":"A conversation with Ben Werdm\u00fcller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched a video today for <a href=\"https:\/\/el30.mooc.ca\/course_outline.htm\">our eLearning 3.0 class<\/a> &#8211; an interview between <a href=\"https:\/\/www.downes.ca\/\">Stephen Downes<\/a> (course facilitator) and <a href=\"https:\/\/werd.io\/\">Ben Werdm\u00fcller<\/a>, cofounder of ELGG and Known.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_QM8mAX3cV0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This was an interesting conversation for myself because I am very interested in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/IndieWeb\">the Indie Web<\/a> and wrestling what we can of the internet away from the corporations. In the spirit of this, I went with <a href=\"https:\/\/reclaimhosting.com\/\">Reclaim Hosting<\/a> (Hippie Hosting back in the day) to host my website, geoffcain.com, and I am also using WordPress. I would like to build out something here to help my family migrate into a post-Facebook world and get control back of their data. And by data, I mean their identities, stories, photos, etc. past, present, and future. I loved a few of the reasons Ben gave for the creation of the distributed web:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ownership<\/li>\n<li>Control<\/li>\n<li>Audience<\/li>\n<li>Career<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are all the reasons I am in this space. I want to own my data and identity, control my own data and internet space, develop my audience based on something besides ad revenue, and promote my professional life. I would also add how important privacy is now. I think it is obvious to everyone now that Zuckerberg and company are not our friends.<\/p>\n<p>I find it hysterical when people freak out about the &#8220;dark web,&#8221; distributed web, or <a href=\"https:\/\/ipfs.io\/\">IPFS<\/a> because criminals are using it. I think the internet now is a criminal enterprise with people buying and selling our privacy and our politics.<\/p>\n<p>I like the attention to ethics that seems to be happening in this course. I think it helps that Downes has a background in philosophy. That is one of the biggest problems in tech (and many other sectors in our society) is that over-specialization leaves out ethics and thinking about the long-term consequences (and unintended consequences) of the choices that we make when building internet tools and platforms.<\/p>\n<p>I found this video very inspirational and I am looking forward to learning more about distributed web spaces and how we can use them not only for education but to get my family to create our own social network!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched a video today for our eLearning 3.0 class &#8211; an interview between Stephen Downes (course facilitator) and Ben Werdm\u00fcller, cofounder of ELGG and Known. This was an interesting conversation for myself because I am very interested in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/a-conversation-with-ben-werdmuller\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[452],"tags":[1353,1352,1008,1351,1339,1350,100],"class_list":["post-2196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","tag-blockchain","tag-distributedweb","tag-downes-2","tag-indieweb","tag-reclaimhosting","tag-werdmuller","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}