LSD, Litmus Tests, Hackers and Blogging for Dollars

If one more person asks me how I make money on my blog, I'm going to explode. After eight days in silent meditation we finally broke silence at the conclusion. You'd imagine after consecutive evenings of 'dharma' (Buddhist teachings) talks on topics such as loosening our grip on attachments and desire in order to cultivate generosity that perhaps if nowhere else that these folks might understand the value of generosity.

"What do you do?"
"I'm a marketing coach, writer and blogger."
"Yeah, I've heard about blogs. How are you doing making money with it?"

Ughh....

Last night, I saw New York Times technology columnist John Markoff speak about his new book, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer. [Excerpt in Silicon Valley Metro.]

Markoff explains the complex intersection of cultural,  political and economical milieu that catalyzed the personal computing revolution in the sixties. (Aside: Renee was sitting next to me with her laptop and took complete notes. Sometimes, it's very cool to live in Silicon Valley. It was like a living museum last night with many of the people credited in the book actually sitting right by you in the audience.)

The epicenter of this [political, social and cultural] activity [that led to personal computer] was the area around Stanford University, which offered the perfect confluence of cutting-edge science and countercultural passion and its driving force was what would one day come to be known as the Hacker Ethic - the notion that sharing information freely should be the foundation and goal of all computing. Few people today realize that among the unlikely ingredients that contributed to the computer revolution were LSD and est, the Whole Earth Catalog and the first storefront computer centers, the Homebrew Computer Club and research centers that were as likely to have an air of communes as of labs. - jacket, What the Dormouse Said, John Markoff

Summing up: The folks that set the stage for the future of personal computing - the likes of Doug Engelbart, John McCarthy, and Fred  Moore - did so because they believed in empowering individuals not necessarily lining their pockets. Fred Moore, "anti-war activist and single father knit the community together with a pile of special punch cards and a knitting needle and helped create the People's Computer Company and the Homebrew Computer Club" [1], died without even a blip of an obituary mention anywhere.

Markoff hypothesized that everything that sparked the revolution happened within a ten-mile radius of Kepler's bookstore, a hub of countercultural and Marxist intellectual discourse.

I can't quite place my finger on it, but something eerily similar is  happening today in the personal media revolution but not necessarily near Kepler's. If you want to understand personal media/citizen's media/grassroots media, it would behoove one to understand the Hacker Ethic that predates bloggers by nearly forty years.

Someone in the audience helps paint the picture for us: "At that time, we had Haight-Ashbury, dope,  hippies, the free speech movement, all that stuff. The Homebrew [Computer] Club was egalitarian." We'd take turns standing up and stating:  "I have...",  "I want...", "I worked on this...",  "I have a problem...", "I have a tip...", "Does anyone know..." And then we ended up spending the rest of the meeting matching up with each other. All other organizations at that time were lecture formats. There was an ethos of "Everything wants to be free, let's share with each other." The vision: "A revolt against institutions" and a vision of "placing power in the hands of ordinary people." Recall the much-later 1984 Macintosh launching Super Bowl commercial echoing that people's revolution sentiment.

Let me set the record straight once and for all. I started this blog because I thought I had something to say and something to share. Period. I'm not productizing it. I'm not monetizing it.

Sure, I once entertained the notion that writing a blog could serve as a 'platform" for writing a book. I had the misconception that you actually needed to publish a book to say something and share something. My intentions were to share. The book was simply the default that's-just-the-way-it's-done distribution medium, as everyone knows.

Before Doug Engelbart's groundbreaking 1968 demo, everyone knew that room-sized computers were the exclusive domain of scientists and defense workers in white coats doing complex numerical processing. In a single demo, the vision of an interactive media for everyone was firmly embedded in the hearts and minds of a new generation of students anxious to do good work. Larry Tesler dismisses the drug culture as an active ingredient: "It was an exciting place - a frontier. The more we pushed forward, the more exciting it was. That itself was psychedelic enough." (Aside: Yet at close of evening I meet a tech CEO whose dad happened to be Stewart Brand's LSD dealer.)

Once in a while new readers stumble onto this blog from another business blogger's blogroll. (Just for the record, I am a capitalist unlike most of the frontiers-folk in the PC revolution.) What kind of blogging animal is this? Is it a marketing blog? I chuckle thinking about it.

This blog isn't about marketing. It's mainly for creative people everywhere on earth - encompassing marketers, along with creative directors, writers, artists, actors, filmmakers, homemakers, mystics, entrepreneurs, visionaries, quiet revolutionaries and much much more.

I believe nothing I can write can portray my original intent better than this snippet below from Po Bronson. It clinches it. Following this snippet, Po goes on to relate the creation of The Writer's Grotto. God, I cannot do any summary of it justice. (If you have a chance, read Chapter 37, Nobody Taught Me: The Benefit of Being Around Like-Minded People in What Should I Do With My Life?)

Julie asked  me,  "Can writing schools really teach you to write?" I never thought that was the litmus test. Writing school helped me by surrounding me with people who aspired to the same ideals I did. I'd been a bond salesman - I didn't know any other writers,  and I'd never even met a writer. I didn't even know any readers. If the other traders and salespeople read books, they never mentioned it. At school, for at least one night a week, I sat down beside people who thought nothing was more important than making a sentence sing... Who believed that having a story accepted by a small journal with a readership of a thousand librarians was just about the most prestigious accomplishment imaginable... Who had chosen, like me, to compromise their love lives and work lives to carve out time for being alone with their thoughts and a pencil... Who had received rejection letter after rejection letter, and who had been called "impractical" by their parents. I can't emphasize enough the sway of being in a community of  like-minded people. As New Orleans had its effect on Marc and Julia, my writing school helped support the choice I'd made. Because the hardest thing was not learning to write; the hardest thing was to never give up. - Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life, p. 251

So you may ask me (fine, I promise I won't explode): "Can blogs really make you money?" Well, I never thought that was the litmus test.

[1] Slashdot's review of the book.

Comments

[Lei/Cottontimer]

I love your approach. I recently joined the About Weblogs Network and started the Genetics and Public Blog (http://www.aboutweblogs.com/genetics). Although the Network IS for profit, it still believes in providing high quality content first. Every blogger on the Network is blogging about their passion and if it happens to make them a little money, then all the better! The Gen/PH Blog is probably the least amenable to monetizing than the other blogs on the Network, e.g., scrapbooking, stamping, etc., but I think I'm getting a lot more out of it than just money.

BTW, since there is nothing wrong with trying to make a living, if anyone is interested in making money online, another blogger on the Network has a Make Money Online Blog that might be useful (http://www.aboutweblogs.com/makemoney/).

[Lei/Cottontimer]

Sorry, those links seem a little messed up.

http://www.aboutweblogs.com/genetics
http://www.aboutweblogs.com/makemoney

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

I just wanted to clarify that THIS blog is not driven primarily by a profit motive. Many of the greatest revolutions - the Renaissance comes to mind - have not been either. Having been in the periphery of the blogging phenonemon (first, a reader; "I don't have time to blog") since early 2001, I know its emergence was strongly driven by the Hacker Ethic. Obviously, after Engelbart, McCarthy, Moore and others, more folks came in and productized the vision and research into the likes of Alta, Apple, Microsoft.

That said, besides inspiration to keep going, I also like to have conversations here about funding our "art" (whatever that may be) and marketing it while staying true to our voice. The blogging for passion concept by About you mention is extremely interesting - it echoes some ideas about providing a living for "artists" I have swirling around. I'm not against making a living, but I'm that's not what I am doing with THIS blog.

[Lei/Cottontimer]

Evelyn, Anyone who has read your blog for even a week would know that your blog is not driven by profit. At least not profit via blogging. :)

[Shawn]

If you want to understand personal media/citizen's media/grassroots media, it would behoove one to understand the Hacker Ethic that predates bloggers by nearly forty years.

I think the same applies for the Open Source Software Movement as well.

[Mar Junge]

Evelyn,
Funny that many of the panel members at BizWire's Blogging Seminar were concerned about the "Marketing Model" of their blogs. Let's set the record straight at tomorrow's roundtable.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Lei, You're right. My point is it's good to understand the roots of personal computing back in late sixties as the original foundation behind the spirit of personal media. Many bloggers aren't necessarily driven by the same motivations as that of big-J journalists.

Mar, I certainly have models for companies and businesses depending on their objectives; this particular blog, as are many, is a personal "outlet". I stopped long ago compartmentalizing my life into separate buckets for business, life, pleasure, love, spirit, etc. You get the whole package deal (for good or bad) when you come here!

Shawn, Yep. The Hacker Ethic predates the Open Source movement. All that set stage for blogosphere as we know it. At the event, Dennis Allison, co-founder of the Peoples Computer and founder of Dr. Dobbs Journal, Company thanked Jim Warren (in audience), the first editor, for paving the way on the ideas that are roots of open source movement. Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Sol and Osborne 1, piped up and added that "the ethos of sharing that I even originally derided pays off in the end. 'They' said that open source would never work." Basically Markoff's book is a nod & acknowledgement to the spirit and thinking that led to personal computing, open source, peer-to-peer [not just files] sharing such as Napster, Flickr, del.icio.us, blogosphere, etc. etc.

[Jim Warren]

Uh, just a small(?) correction. Several comments here have referenced personal computing as starting in the sixties. Nay, nay!

Yes, much of the hippie/utopian SPIRIT of the '60s was apparent throughout much of the early development in personal computing, especially in the San Franciso Bay Area.

But the first microprocessor wasn't invented until th early '70s'; the Homebrew Computer Club (the first such club in the world) didn't hold it's first meeting until Mar. 5, 1975 (32 people in Gordon French's garage); the first issue of BYTE wasn't until Sep., 1975 ... and the phrase, "personal computing" wasn't even used until 1976. (And I didn't hold the First West Coast Computer Faire unti Apr. 15-17, 1977.)