Opt-Out – Page 2 – Garrick van Buren

Opting Out of the Old You

“In other words, I need to unsubscribe from my old habits, and embrace new ones. It’s about time”. – Anna Spysz

email’s inviting

Landing in my inbox this morning:

“Many people have mentioned that they didn’t receive the Evite invitation we sent, so I’m sending this follow up email…”

Some Chose IRC

“I want to experiment with more slow-cooked communications, and with making deeper connections to the people I interact with.” – Gregory Brown

It makes me smile to think about a mass migration out of Twitter into boring, timeless, technologies like email and IRC. IRC especially.

REmail

I’m so tired of doing this kind of thing in silos. Email is mine. Google+ is Google’s. In terms of location, I feel like I’m in a corporate setting in Google+, and I feel like I’m at home when I’m in email. The reason, aside from design differences, is that email is free-as-in-freedom. Its protocols are NEA: Nobody owns them, Everybody can use them, and Anybody can improve them. Not the case with these commercial Web dairy farms. – Doc Searls

Each day, there’s some number of Google+, Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter notifications in my email inbox. Ironic that these communications services, seemingly wanting to be as ubiquitous as email, need to use email as a primary notification service.

And the daily deal space (Groupon, Living Social, et. al.) are 95% email.

Every couple of days, I’m asked, ‘What comes after Twitter, Facebook, (etc)?’

I don’t know, I’m in email.

Small Victories

Scott Adams on Opt-out

“Lately I’ve started worrying that I’m not getting enough boredom in my life….it’s worth keeping an eye on the link between our vanishing boredom and our lack of innovation.” – Scott Adams

Fadebook

“What I see instead is more properly the fading of the entire social media category, the victim of an ever-shortening event horizon.” – Bob Cringely

Dave Continues His Opt-Out

“There is a delete account command. I used it.” – Dave Winer

Asocial Tech

“Stop staring at that little screen in your hands, turn your head and have a look at the big screen of life. Technology is really far away from improving the social part of our lives, but it has all the power to do it. That’s what frustrates me even more.” – falseisnottrue

“The term for what I did is opt-out.”

Back in May, I wrote Turn On, Tune In, Opt Out. I’m increasingly confident that it’s the next big trend in technology.

For the past 7 years, my bellwether for innovative, compelling, new technologies has been Dave Winer. Even before Google+ has been opened up to the general Google public – he’s taken a look and said, no thanks.

“I wish they didn’t use words like ‘downgrade’ and ‘deleted in the opt-out process. That’s so super-dramatic, self-important and one-sided. And makes me want to not try it again, even if you make some of the changes I’d like to see. I don’t see it as a downgrade, I see it as restoring sanity. And I didn’t delete anything because I never created anything in your stupid social network. Lighten up. The term for what I did is opt-out. That’s what you should call it.” – Dave Winer

DuckDuckGo is looking more attractive every day.