The Google Way

I believe that everyone should have an independent online presence. This presence and the opportunity to express opinions is likely more important that you vote or your money. I tend to agree with Lawrence Lessig (Republic, Lost) on this matter. You are likely not to have enough money to have influence and your vote has little consequence in that policy makers are most influenced by big money before or after election. I still have high hopes for the Internet as a source of influence.

This post is not about my political views, but the issue of an independent online presence. My ideal would be if each computer could function as a server. It can you know, but ISPs do not like this often drastically differentiating download and upload speeds and discouraging or blocking static IPs (so for the geek talk). A second option would be to rent space on a server allowing you independence of action. This is what I presently do.

My content is available online at Learning Aloud. Yes, it is a catchy title, but it also reflects my philosophy and beliefs about effective learning. Forcing an externalization of what you are struggling to understand is a way to encourage deeper processing of ideas if for no other reason that you seldom want to totally embarrass yourself in front of others. Creating a statement of understanding is a great self check. Brilliant ideas sometimes do not seem so brilliant if you force yourself to spell them out (that was kind of a pun).

Anyway, what about the Google Way thing? That probably makes little sense so far. The Google Way is empirical. You should encourage tests of ideas that involve data. I should admit that I am an educational researcher and hence professional commit to this code as well. Here is the issue I am attempting to evaluate. I have purchased server access because this situation allows me the most independence (see first couple of paragraphs). When I started this approach a few years ago, I was paying about $10 a month. Not bad. In fact, the cost has gone down drastically. Strangely, I am complaining. Signing up more an more customers at a very low rate seems to retard the reaction time of the servers and this means potential readers become frustrated after 20+ sentences and refuse to wait for your content to go up. Hence, the rate is lower, but you have fewer individuals who read what you write.

An observation I have made about the pricing structure for web services is that there is no middle ground. I dub this the Goldilocks effect. The price is either free or very low or very expensive. I still want to pay $10-15 a month and that level never seems to be available.

So, I have decided on a test (the Google Way). I have decided to return to my Blogger roots and cross post content through my own server account and here. This Blogger account is more responsive or it seems so. Then, if it seems the same content generates more reads here, I may have to rethink my position on being independent.