Dear friends,

I was in 8th standard when I first started using internet. BSNL landline connection could be plugged into a dial up modem and typing bsnlten as password would fetch unlimited internet, charged by each minute of usage, blocking phone usage all the time. Later broadband internet became commonplace and even my mobile phone has high speed internet access at the moment.

Throughout these few years, I've fallen in inseparable love with internet and the web. I had reserved this statement for a day of resounding success, but yet, the web has made me what I am and it will continue to shape what I will be. I owe the web for plenty of my ideas, knowledge, and friendships. Every day on the web brings me fascinating avenues of thoughts to pursue.

If there was a radio generation and a television generation, today's generation will be called a social network & instant message generation. There are tools which let you keep in touch with thousands of friends simultaneously or converse with a friend thousands of miles away instantaneously. Umpteen issues get discussed to the minutest detail bringing out issues that nobody would have noticed before. Content sharing and discovery has become effortless.

But the web is greater than that. To me, the web is a symbol of freedom, creativity, individuality, and collaboration.

Despite the best that the existing social networks have to offer, they have limitations in the forms of guidelines, noise, rigidity, control, etc.

So, today I am promoting myself to the position of a first class citizen of the web. And this website, learnlearn.in, is my passport.

I am just doing something that people have been doing since the internet was created. The web was and is meant to consist of individuals building their own websites, blogs, forums, games, videos, images, cartoons, anything conceivable. But when social platforms grew up into hungry behemoths, it became impossible for the independent web maker to stand up on their own for the fear of missing out. The tools that allowed people to keep up with multiple websites (like RSS and email) are all dying down. The entire traffic of the world wide web is beginning to move towards few websites.

And I do not like it.

Follow me

You can follow the updates to this website using a feed reader. The feed is located at http://asd.learnlearn.in/feed.atom

I might later find a way to bring the updates automatically to all the social networks, but I'll definitely not be doing it manually.

If you want to be updated via email, just let me know.

Comments

As you can probably see this website has no embedded comments. It is not that I don't want or "like" your comments. I love them! But instead of just commenting on links shared on social networks, or under articles on others' websites, I urge you to make it big. Start your own website or blog. Get a domain name. Post your comments as well thought out articles. Otherwise all that you say, all the nasty fights you pick up on threads, they're all going into trash soon. But when you build something on your own, it stays. For as long as you want.

And then send me a link to what you write. I promise to edit the relevant article and include your idea with the link.

Or you can just send me a plain old email.

There are a lot of other issues I have not mentioned here. I hope to soon write more about the reasons why we should stay independent on the web. Keep in touch.