John Naughton in his weekly Observer column raises an interesting point in a recent opinion piece. For many, the internet, or more specifically the ‘web’ and what it has morphed into has become little more than a proliferation of walled gardens owned by the likes of Google, X, Facebook and Substack for whom “free speech is something that is algorithmically curated while the speakers are intensively surveilled and their is data mined for advertising purposes”.

He reminds us that before all of these horticultural abominations arose on the back of what we now call Web 2.0 there was a truly safe, open space known as the blogosphere that could genuinely be a modern realisation of something Jürgen Habermas’s called the “the public sphere” because it was open to all, everything was discussable and social rank didn’t determine who was allowed to speak.

Naughton’s column has made me want to revisit this blog as I realise the importance of the freedom to own my own opinions and ideas and not have them filtered and surveilled by the very tech overlords who I despise and continue to be the antithesis of what an open and democratic web should be about.

Now is an even more important time for those of us with any kind of tech background and knowledge to be raising up against those people (the so-called tech bro’s) who want to create the world according to their own particular vision and who have managed to monopolise the very platforms who most people use to try and articulate their thoughts and their ideas.

Treat this as the start of a revival of Software Architecture Zen where I will attempt to help cut through the tech-hype we are being bombarded with and deliver a more rational and realistic view on where technology may be taking us.

To paraphrase a well known (tech) TV commercial – let’s try and see how 2024 does not need to be like 1984.