So, Robin Sloan writes: (https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/new-avenues/)
> Publishing on the internet is a solved problem; finding each other on the internet, in a way that’s healthy and sustainable … that’s the piece that has never quite fallen into place.
If, as Publication Studio's Matthew Stadler claims (at https://vimeo.com/14888791), as as I've been quoting him over the past decade, "Publication is not the production of books but the production of a public for whom those books have meaning. There is no pre-existing public. The public is created through deliberate, wilful acts..."
Then this is the nub of it. The business of putting archivable objects on the Internet is solved. What publishing needs to do now is gather the audiences around those objects in a meaningful way. We also need to stop conflating those two activities.
@jmaxsfu @jmaxsfu Thank you for posting this. I’ve had a similar sentiment lately. The most effective way to propagate the early internet was to have venture capital build out the infrastructure. We’re now at the point where capitalism has built out the “super highway” and netizens have unfortunately only settled in a few walled cities (Google, Facebook, Twitter). The walls are crumbling, the natives are restless, and there’s plenty of real estate out there. Let’s go!
