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June 19, 2016 04:00 am

Open and Rich Co-exist But Don't Mingle So Much

In an interview with The Atlantic, Ev Williams, best known for co-founding Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, says the web is about money now -- and not creativity. According to him, the burst of creativity has repeatedly been followed by big companies showing up and locking it down. From the article: But the thing about dreaming up a future, and making it real, is then you have to live in it. Back in San Francisco, coming out of the BART station on Market Street, he admits that the web game has changed since he came up. [Editor's note: he is talking about web services that allow you to book a taxi with an app, pay for stuff you purchase with your phone]. "There were always ecommerce startups," he says. "I was never part of that world, and we kind of looked down on them when the whole boom was happening. We were creating businesses, but ours had more creativity, ours weren't just for the money. Or maybe ours were even for utility but not just money, whereas clearly there are ways for both." He laughs. "Even the Google guys -- they were trying to create something really useful and good for the world, and they made all the money." Software developer and writer Dave Winer disagrees. He believes that not all technologies are money-driven -- at least when you look at it from a different perspective. He writes: The fun is over. Now it's about money. I guess that's what you see from his perspective. And from Facebook, Apple and Google, and maybe Oracle and Salesforce, and a few others. But there are technologies that went a different way. My favorite example is Manhattan's relationship to Central Park. The apartment buildings around the park are the money, and the creativity is in the park. The buildings are exclusive, the most expensive real estate in the world. The park is open to anyone, rich or poor, from anywhere in the world. The park is the engine of renewal. It's where the new stuff comes from. The buildings are where the money is parked. In the interview Williams did with the Atlantic, in NYC, they looked into the park from a nearby hotel. That's one valid perspective of course. Or you could go for a walk and see wha''s happening inside the park. You can see a great concert at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, but there's great music in the park too. It's different. But it's good music. And the price is right.

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