I return to this episode of Ze Frank‘s The Show every so often to remind me of what is beautiful about making things on the web (something Ze is very good at doing and encouraging).

“Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn’t really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.”

I’m constantly reminded of this video as I work with my students on their individual portfolio/blogs and answer the never-ending “why do we need individual blogs?” question.

Earlier this week, I finally killed my Facebook participation:

» Goodbye, Facebook and Spotify

For the life of me, I’m not sure why I clung to that space for so long, but in the last few days I’ve realized how little I need that space or many of the 3rd party “social media content creation” tools that are seeking to make a business model on the backs of “user generated content.”

I worked in the (direct) marketing world for a few years and I became very aware of the allure and profits that can be generated by getting more and more content created within your silo that you can then take to advertisers (your real clients) and sell for a healthy margin over the costs of the authoring tools you provided.

Instead of consigning myself, my students and my children to that sort of a web, I’d rather have a web that relies on disinter-mediated connections and encourages the creation of content in our own spaces.

It’s always better to own than rent, both in terms of property, housing as well music, blog platforms, email services etc. A web that encourages responsible ownership by individuals (or at least more tacitly implies the trade-offs of using “free services” to do mission critical things like email your family or store your child’s baby pictures) is a web that I envision for the future.

So, go buy your land and start your own farm for your content production. Don’t work on Maggie’s Farm no more.