Unicycle #6 - Plotting Ahead
Hello dear friends :-). As a reminder, I’m Alex Grintsvayg and you’re reading Unicycle. I welcome your feedback - hit Reply or message me anonymously.
This week is short since Unicycle moved from Friday to Wednesday, so I’m doing a short newsletter.
What’s the Plot of My Intellectual Plot?
Alex Danco’s newsletter is one of my favorite reads each week. His most recent post is called Homesteading the Twittersphere. It touches on several areas of interest for me: how the economics of Twitter and newsletters mirror the economics of open-source software.
Quick summary: both open-source and social media run on a gift economy. There’s no scarcity of “things” to trade, as there would be in the exchange economy we’re more familiar with. Instead you create something valuable (a piece of code or an article) and give it away for free. In return you earn a reputation as a generous and talented coder/writer/thinker. To maximize returns, most people specialize in a unique topic that others value, thereby “homesteading” a plot of intellectual territory and associating that topic with themselves.
Danco’s article maps out exactly what I’m hoping to do with the Unicycle. My original goal for this newsletter was just to write every week. We’re only on week six so it’s a bit early, but I’ll count it a success. The next step is to define my personal monopoly - the lens through which I share my perspective.
So far, it’s been a struggle to nail that down.
Cheers,
Grin
This newsletter goes out every Wednesday at 12pm ET. If I’m late, I’ll pay $200 to the first person who emails me about it. Got this after noon? Hit Reply and make me pay! Thanks for keeping me accountable.