Public or private?

That is the question

Public or private? That is the question of the day and I’d like to hear your thoughts.

When I first started learning HTML and hand-coding webpages in the mid-1990s, the internet was a friendly place. It was a place of discovery.

There were only 2,738 websites in 1994 (source). Only 3% of Americans had ever signed onto the Web according to Pew Research. 1995 was the year I started contributing to the web.

The web, from day one, was free. After the first couple of years, the web team at CERN managed to convince their employee to enter it into the public domain. That means nobody owns the web. Anybody can use it, or build on top of it. You don’t need permission to create a website, like you do with apps in the app store or pages on a social media site. (source)

In the beginning, the web was public. I enjoyed learning from others and contributing, too. I remember hand-coding a travel blog in Notepad on a library computer in a foreign country and sending it via FTP to a webserver back home so my friends could read it.

When blogging arrived, I dabbled and then embraced it, influenced by the style of Dave Winer’s Scripting News and Jason Kottke’s Kottke.org, among the earliest blogs. I linked to friends’ blogs and others linked to mine. I still remember when Dave Winer linked to a post I had made on my blog reviewing the WSJ redesign in 2002.

After Dooce got fired in 2002, however, I started to rethink things and — even though I didn’t write about my employer, my coworkers or my work on my blog — largely curtailed writing publicly.

In the intervening years, Facebook would come and go. Then Twitter. Then Instagram. LinkedIn. Substack. And on and on. Each time, there has been the delicate deliberation of what to share publicly, what to share privately, what not to share at all. Perhaps you can relate? Those who know me know that I value privacy. And yet, I also cherish community.

So what to do? I debated for over a year what subdomain/URL to use on Substack. Should I go “undercover” and publish under a pseudonym and speak freely? Or reserve my name and write on the record?

When I started this blog this year, I opted to do so publicly.

Starting anew

So far, this blog has attracted readers who both know me in real life and those that are new to me. And, if I’m being honest, I have really enjoyed the comments some of you have shared so far.

Today Substack teased its ability to to host “private publications.” This isn’t new functionality but seeing them promote it today brought this question back to the fore.

Start your private Substack

Should I change this to a private publication and potentially speak more freely to a smaller, vetted audience of friends? Or should I continue to find my way out in the open?

As I was considering this, another Substack, Steady by Dan Rather, reminded me of the value of sharing publicly.

Thank You

Now I am not for a minute comparing myself to Dan Rather. But it does underscore what’s possible when something is shared with the world. Not probable, I recognize. But possible.

So, dear reader, I ask you: what would you do? And why? Thank you in advance for sharing your wisdom and perspective.

Until next time,

-bp