Free More Awesome Than Money by Jim Dwyer Page B

Door account:
    @acmroom
    Just lost the game.
    â€”
    Diaspora owned them. Besides coding all night and hustling to get the Kickstarter appeal in shape, it turned out that they had to come up with premiums for people who contributed money. What the heck was this, a public radio fund-raiser? Stickers they could manage pretty easily. T-shirts for people who gave a bit more. Benenson had a suggestion for the midlevel contributors: as a kind of joke, they could give out CDs with whatever code they came up with by the end of the summer, signed by them as if they were rock stars. For megadonors of two thousand dollars, they would give computers loaded with Diaspora and a promise of easy support. These were outsize promises, but the only ones they expected to donate anything like two thousand dollars were their parents, who were unlikely to fuss if they didn’t get a new computer from their sons as a fund-raising premium.
    Korth suggested that they give a presentation on Diaspora to the Internet Society, since the project was inspired by the talk Moglen gave at one of the group’s meetings. It was a freewheeling session.
    Later that night, they had to make the video for Kickstarter. The four of them sat in a classroom, writing discussion points on a blackboard. Who are we? What is it? Why does it matter? Their dress was motley, but they came by it honestly, not in the practiced manner of hipsters: a fewT-shirts, a bowling shirt, some stubbled chin, a few coffee cup accessories. They sat behind a teacher’s desk. No cameraperson: Max perched a pocket-sized video camera on top of an overhead projector.
    After introducing themselves, the stilted recitations began.
    Then Dan jumped in.
    â€œHold on,” he said. “What is this project? Because I have absolutely no idea.”
    Cue to Rafi: “In real life, we talk to each other. We don’t need to hand our messages to hubs and have them hand it to our friends. Our virtual lives should work the same way.”
    He spoke in robotic bursts: “We don’t know what’s going to happen to our data. It’s going to exist into the foreseeable future. So—[he seemed a little flustered]—we need to take control of it.”
    Max broke in: “Because once you give it away once, it’s no longer yours. You cannot stake claim to it.”
    â€œThat’s why my mom won’t put anything on the Internet unless she’s ready to see it in a newspaper,” Rafi said.
    â€œBut we know that’s bogus, because sharing is a human value,” Max said. “Sharing is what makes the Internet really awesome. I think it’s what gets us all excited whether it’s a silly little LOL cat or your newborn nephew—”
    â€œMy newborn kid,” Dan said, drawing a giggle.
    Ilya, whose only contribution up to that point had been warm smiles, said: “No longer will you be at the whim of these large corporate networks, who want to tell you that sharing and privacy are mutually exclusive. Because it will be your node.” No one uttered the word “Facebook” in the video. Ilya’s comment was the closest they came.
    At one point, they seemed to be at a loss, but Dan spun around and moved one of the sliding blackboards to find the next line.
    â€œWhy us?” he said, turning back to face the camera.
    â€œSo,” he said. “Why us?”
    Rafi jumped in: “Us—because we’re ready to do it. We’re ready to work full-time.”
    â€œTwelve hours a day,” Ilya said.
    â€œI think it’s a little more than twelve,” Dan said.
    â€œWe’re ready to give up three months of our lives,” Max said. “Dan and I are graduating from school. Ilya and Rafi turned down some sweet internships. We’re really passionate about this idea. We really want to see it, so we can use it.”
    Max would later estimate that the video was the single most awkward moment of his life. But it