Have you thought about starting or restarting a blogging habit? Have you wanted to write on the internet, but at your own place and at your own address rather than on a social network? Have you been overwhelmed by the online writing options that you’ve found? Well, have we got just the thing for you!
Two months ago I wrote about how I wanted to build blog software to manage my blog, and my website. So we started building Barry’s blog software. From that beginning we’ve come quite a long way in a short time.
It’s been a journey of discovery getting to today, Pika launch day. The team has teased out of me a lot more about why I so strongly want a site on the Internet. Maybe hearing more about my whys will help you understand your whys? Buckle up.
When I was in high school, in the nineties, I wrote a research paper about the Internet (“Internet” was capitalized then). In it I talked about the potential for the Internet to bring people together. I wrote about how disparate people and communities could find each other online. I wrote about how we would find ourselves supported by, and learning from, people across the world. In that naive high school way, I wrote about a potential online utopia.
When I was in college, I took a class on finding hope. For the final project I built a little web site that was basically just a research paper with hyperlinks. I wrote about the hope the Internet provided. I acknowledged that, even then, clouds were forming on the Internet. Storm clouds are not very utopian! Supportive groups were connecting over distance, sure, but there were also hate groups connecting over distance. Still, I saw hope in the Internet, just like I saw hope in humanity. Even in times of uncertainty and strife there continued to be good out there. The Internet would help us discover that good.
That throughline has continued for me over the intervening twenty-five years. Today there’s badness and tracking and manipulation all around the internet (lower-case), but if you are able to peel back that layer you find that, more than ever, there are blogs and personal websites and curiosities galore. It seems that there is no end!
After all of these years, building a place for yourself on the internet still comes with lots of roadblocks. Do you need to know servers? Do you need to know programming? Do you need to navigate complicated interfaces that try to handle every possibility rather than just enough? For most people who find the energy to go searching, the answer to all of those questions is…YES! With Pika, we hope to make the answer NO.
We want everyone to have a blog, and we think that Pika can play a big part in making that possible.
We want Pika to help you express yourself, visually as well as in writing. We want to do that without requiring you to search out programming or technology terms. We want Pika to help you write about what you’re doing. We want Pika to help you journal out loud. We want Pika to help you refine your thinking through writing. We want Pika to help you share your passions. Heck, we want Pika to feed your ego; to remind you that you matter.
We want Pika to help you make connections with others.
This is your life. This is our world. Let’s each plant our flag on the internet and take it back.
