BS”D
When I started publishing on Substack, I thought that this platform would give me two things: An ad-free place to publish and a path to income. As I wrote in a recent note, I no longer see Substack as a path to income, and I already removed the paywall from DaaS and M2D.
With this change, I arrived at a new separation between business and pleasure, between what I gladly give away for free and the services that require payment. From here on, everything I publish on my four public Substacks, I publish for pleasure — and it’s all free. What requires payment is largely the personalized delivery of what I don’t publish.
Below are the three latest posts that explain some of the rationale for this change in my service model.
Make Yourself an Ark: Understanding media through the prism of Genesis 6:14 (Or, how I decided to tear down the paywall)
Trust is the “gopher wood” of the Ark, and the social media created for us by the tech industry are zero-trust environments. We have to create the trust-based media we need. The tech industry will not create them for us.
Key Points
Through the prism of Genesis 6:14, my latest post on MISM sketches out the design of the Ark I am building now that I realize that Substack isn’t what I thought it would be. So far, I highlighted six design principles:
Tear down paywalls.
Reclaim creative sovereignty.
Form agreements.
Invest in cybersecurity.
Create trust-based media.
Thou art that.
Frequently Unasked Question (FUQ) #9: Is Elon Musk the Modern-day Noah?
Is Elon Musk the modern-day Noah? The answer, of course, is ‘no’ — so much for suspense — but it is the reason for the answer, not the answer itself, that makes this post worthy of publication. The reason has nothing to do with any technical challenges or costs of Musk’s mission to Mars. It’s a safe bet that the technical challenges will diminish with time, and it will become easier to say ‘yes’ to Elon’s Ark. But not for me. Here’s how I arrived at my answer to this FUQ.
Key Points
The human superorganism lives out its myths in endless cycles. When we feel coming floods, we elevate heroes to build Arks. On the way to the promised land, we worship the Golden Calf. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Elon Musk is not the modern-day Noah. You are. And I am. Musk will not do for us what we can only do with each other: create trust-based environments to protect us from the flood of bullshit in our media.
To Whom It May Concern: A Service Update
Since February 6, 2023, I've been marketing what I called Dialogue as a Service (DaaS). This was my best response to everything that had changed, and everything that remained unchanged, in the ways of making a living in a world spiraling into a maelstrom that no one could describe.
The human superorganism still can’t describe the maelstrom, but DaaS is hereby retired. It has served its purpose. It is no longer available, either on Substack or any other digital platform. It is retired because it’s no longer my best response to what I observe in the worlds I inhabit. I’ll continue to use this Substack to publish my writings about dialogue as a horizon of possibility, but Dialogue as a Service is no longer a service, and this Substack no longer serves as my “digital storefront”.
So, what’s next? It’s time for a new service model. Here’s my four-part Q&A.
If you have any questions about understanding media through the prism of Genesis 6:14 — or if you’d like to hire me to help you survive the flood — please complete this brief form.
Also, as usual, like, subscribe and share to amplify my Jewish response to fractal falsehood.