I first fell in love with the web or the open aspect of the web when I was trying to finish my PhD during a time where Egypt had a lot of political conflict and I was unable to leave the house because I had a young child and the library at my institution was closed. I needed some resources, and even though I had access to some online resources, I actually needed some paper based resources that did not exist for free online, and at the time, what I fell in love with was green open access stuff that was placed on repositories, and honestly pirated stuff, that was placed online so that I had some access to some articles and book chapters that I wouldn’t normally be able to access from home. And it was that transformative moment for me where I decided that if I publish things, I would like as much as possible for the things that I publish to be openly accessible to other people.
💬 Instagram makes me anxious
I get anxious when in real life friends don’t like an Instagram photo of mine, especially if it related to work I’m undertaking, I wonder why they didn’t spend 2 seconds pressing the heart, did they even see my photo? Don’t they know I like to get, well a like. It makes me worry.
Sometimes…
Adam, this reminds me of Bill Ferriter’s questions about audience and Harold Jarche’s discussion of metrics. I very rarely look at my analytics. What I do is for me firstly, that others may benefit is a bonus of the open web. As Maha Bali points out:
In theory, everyone has the option to publish freely.
Some have websites they control.
Others use the freely available blog hosts like WordPress.com
Either way, it is a person’s individual choice how those postings should be licensed. Some hold tightly to their work. Others attempt the opposite, using unrestrictive CC-BY or even CCZero licensing as they publish.
Of course, it may not get seen. That, too, is one reality of the open web.