The Kid With My Car

Reply: The Kid With My Car

Food for thought. Suppose you bought a shiny new car, then flew to Seattle for a business meeting, leaving it at the airport. Do you still own the car while on the plane at 24,000 feet? What if you give the keys to a kid for valet parking out in the Avenues and he parks it somewhere in the neighborhood while you eat, so you don’t have any idea where the car is and don’t even have the keys. Do you still own the car while you’re eating your ham and cheese?

Haha—ok, well, I definitely own the ham and cheese! Am I close??

With my car, it depends on the legal jurisdiction, the name on the title for the vehicle, the ability of the government to enforce my ownership—and maybe ‘owning’ a car isn’t nearly as important as ‘controlling’ it.

I wonder if that might be the issue here with Micro.blog—perhaps Belle feels like she can’t ‘control’ her stuff enough. I guess I’m trying to draw a parallel between the public_html directory and Micro.blog. If a platform ultimately just feels like a folder that I can sync ‘in’ to and ‘out’ of—then I think it reaches the ideals of ‘ownership’ and ‘control’ on the Web. But that’s me—am I missing something?

(This is also clearing up why I’m seeing TiddlyWikis spring up—that’s a platform where EVERYTHING is local and is likeliest to have longevity because it doesn’t rely on ‘anyone’/‘anybiz’ else.)

PLUNDER THE ARCHIVES