Domain literacy is one of my new causes in 2017. We'll see how successful I am convincing people of what domain literacy is, what the benefits are, and the power of the domain at this point in time. Web domains like Twitter.com and Facebook.com are influencing the world in ways we haven't even imagined.
Think about the power wielded by Twitter and Facebook right now. The collective energy they wield to shift markets, influence opinion, and change how the world works. Or, do they? They only do because we operate within their domain. We go to Twitter or Facebook.com, and have them in our pockets via mobile applications. We give them this power. What if we chose not to? What if we did not use Twitter.com or Facebook.com?
With each message, image, video, and like we've incrementally given power to these domains, and in turn given power to those who have figured out how to dominate within these domains through the replication, automation, and application of their ideology. We tend to mistake this for some Internet-enabled democracy, where in reality those with the know-how, and compute power can out-blast, troll, and silence those who do not.
I'm fascinated by the power we've given to these web domains in just a decade. How much they've captured our attention, and how we've accepted them as the way things are, and something that is inevitable. While I do not think we can fully escape the powerful effects of these domains, I do think that we can maintain our own domains, frequent and support domains that we trust and believe in, and minimize the power we bestow to some of the domains that are destabilizing our world right now.
