Why my own blog?

I've been meaning to start this for quite some time. Over the years I've had various forms of blogs. I was on Tumblr for some time, I had a Medium page, and my wife and I even had a blog together on Squarespace. None of them stuck, and I only have theories of why that is. One of the main reasons I believe is that I didn't have full control over the content. My hope with the blog portion of chronica is that it's a place for me to dump my ramblings, talk about my experiments, and even share some stuff I've been working on.

A while back I read a blog post, that I regretfully can't find anymore, but it resonated more than any other blog post had for quite some time. It made a correlation between the current state of the internet and the current state of traveling. When you travel you are warned of the main streets. Stay away from those shops. It's well known that they are tourist traps. You will get lower quality for a higher price. However, if you put a bit more effort into the finding better places to stop that may be further out, you'll have a much better experience. The quality will better, it may even be cheaper, and it will be more authentic. You may even find other similar places that they recommend for you to check out.

I believe we are falling for the main street of the internet. The easily accessible "stores" and "shops" such as Facebook, Medium, and other common social and blog outlets are by far the easiest place to digest information, but at the cost of quality (albeit not always), and the many times the cost of privacy. I envision the internet experience returning back to a more decentralized platform where individuals have their own site and they own their data. Alternatives to common social platforms do exists, they just take a bit more effort. However, in my experience you're left with a richer experience. Taking the time to research and to find a place a bit farther off the main street is indeed more labor intensive, but rewarding.

My hope is the that my website is just that. A central place that I fully own and have control over where my projects, thoughts, and works can all be displayed. There is no overly invasive trackers, no advertisements, and no abstraction over what you are seeing. Everything is open sourced and transparent. This is an alternative to me using platforms like Medium which bombard you with advertisements and track as much information about you and your readings as possible, or Facebook that caters what you see further enforcing filter bubbles and essentially selling you as their product.

You can read more about how this site is build and works here.

Thanks for stopping by.

Chris