Laura Kalbag

Owning and controlling my own content

One of the ultimate goals we have at Ind.ie is owning and controlling our own data. That means I want to have ownership and control over my own personal information, rather than it being in the hands of big corporations. My personal information could range from something as intensely private as my medical information, or my private messages with another person. These are things that are increasingly digital, online somewhere, and thus “in the cloud” (“the cloud is just someone else’s computer.”) I don’t necessarily want these things on someone else’s computer. Especially not someone else who might use that information against me, be it a corporation or a government.

Owning and controlling my own data also means having control over the “content” I choose to share and publish publicly. This is stuff I don’t mind having “out there”, but it is still mine. It might be a dog photo or a “subtweet”, but it’s my dog photo and my subtweet. If I thought it worthwhile to post somewhere, it’s a part of my digital history. It’s a little part of me. It might be a shitty little part of me, but it’s still a part of me.

I’m working to make my site the canonical location for all these parts of me. My blog already contains posts about technology I no longer use and stances I no longer believe in. I own them, in all senses of the word.

Notes

Another little progress towards this goal is creating the Notes section of my site. Notes is “content” that is less notable than a blog post, but still something I want to share. Each note is a thing I’ve probably syndicated to another site, a social network or similar. But it’s existence is now not limited to the lifespan of that social network. The Notes section also has its own RSS feed, so you don’t have to visit my site or use a social network to see it.

Part 1 of an as-yet un-named series. Working out my thinking around personal websites.