Ask HN: Would you be interested in a “cyberpunk” inspired news site?
Hi HN,
I've been thinking about starting a blog / news site covering topics like privacy, cryptography, robotics, software etc, with a critical view on their evolution and potential effects on society at large.
Ideally it would be made of long form, researched, in depth articles and interviews with experts in those fields.
I'd also like to feature regular "hackers" doing cool stuff (like the guy who traveled to shenzhen to build his own iPhone)
What do you think of this idea ? Would you be interested in reading such a site if it existed ?
78 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] thread1. Writing and publishing everyday or so over a sustained period of time improves a person's skill at writing in general and writing for an audience in particular.
2. One of the ways popular blogs capture first time readers is with a back catalog of other interesting posts that suggest the site is worth book-marking/revisiting.
In terms of news sites, pick a topic to start because I can go just about anywhere for a random mix of subjects. Making one is probably harder than a blog because a news site is competing with Tom's Hardware, Hacker News Reddit, Google News, Facebook, and so on. Without staff, that will be really hard.
Good luck.
You're not wrong that this is short-term easier to establish an audience, but your long-term goal is to get to a point where a hypothetical reader of your blog will say "Well, yeah, you could find that topic anywhere, but personally I'm more interested in $NAME's opinion on the topic".
The best way to establish that is put out really good content until you've built up enough blogger 'cred' that you can tell me about other parts of you and I'll just wanna know.
2013 has been a pretty seminal point in time imho – ubiquitous mobile computing/internet, Google basically buying a DARPA owned Boston Dynamics, etc, etc.
It has only been accelerating since then (artificial wombs anyone?). We are fully living in "hardcore" cyperpunk times already for sure..
I'm a designer and journalist very interested in similar areas. I just started releasing a podcast focusing on similar subject matter: http://metaverse.audio
If you end up moving forward I'd love to chat. ejfox@ejfox.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk
Thematically there is very little different between cyberpunk and steampunk.
http://randomghost.tumblr.com/
From the cyberpunk angle, there was a Facebook page I used to follow doing this sort of coverage; but ended up being too high-level.
I personally don't think I would read it.
Sites: https://www.neondystopia.com https://n-o-d-e.net
The biggest contributing factor to the decline of the cyberpunk aesthetic in the 80's-90's was how quickly it became realism. If you read a William Gibson novel now, it would be like reading William Faulkner in the 1800's.
(I know Faulkner didn't publish in the 1800's. don't go there, this is my reply and that means I decide how time works here.)
The implications of the use of the advanced tools we build on the individual, and the species as a whole, is rarely considered with the gravity it deserves, at least by the vast majority of end users, I believe, in large part, because capitalism is predatory, and subsequently the tools it uses to accomplish it's end must be uniformly masked, behind a layer of safe aesthetics. A revival of the cyberpunk aesthetic in general, which paints technology as dangerous, empowering, and hints that the deeper into the technical details you get, the more empowered you become, would be a welcome return to realism from the magazine glossy, UI/UX of modern services. I mean seriously, this "Mumblecore" jargon and friendly faces on services which, let's be frank here, are simply the injections of profit and information siphoning mechanisms (the successful ones anyway) into monetary transactions for goods and services, and exchanges of information, between people, which already existed, in exchange for a razor-thin layer of convenience, and a gross distortion to their psychological faculties for perceiving value, to the end of contributing to the centralization of money, thus access to resources, and data, thus the ability to derive information, into the hands of a few, and creating (I'm trying my best to tone down the hyperbole here) impermeable veil of branding, that obfuscates as completely as possible, what anything actually is, or does.
(Don't go there. It's my reply, that means I can nest as many clauses in a statement as I want.)
If your blog even piques someone's curiosity, or contributes peripherally to a compulsion to dig deeper into how the layers of complex systems underlying the mechanisms we use to interact with the world now work, it was worth every minute you spent on it up to that point. Seriously, do it.
Speaking from personal experience, if you had shown me an ad for a "coding bootcamp" when I was 10, I would have chosen.. literally anything else to get into. Fortunately, I got my hands on a copies "Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller", and "Shadowrun" instead. The sentiment of that art, the feeling of those ideas, with regards to technology, has kept my interest alive through day after day of questioning whether or not this specific impending bout of 'meeting business requirements' in which I am about to engage means I am a terrible person.
Just do it dude. You know you want to.
However, you are describing two very different things. With a blog, one simply begins to write blog posts. There is no other approach to take, as you must before anything else establish your credibility as a writer within a domain of knowledge.
A news site is a far different proposal. Before you put a lot of effort into it, you need to figure out what might be crassly termed a 'business model', which in more general terms is simply, "here is my vision: what work is required to make it a reality; how will that work be done; who will do that work; why will they chose to do that work; how do I expect to benefit from this; do I still like what I am envisioning."
I think there's still lots to be dissatisfied with in the current landscape of content providers and aggregators.
For instance, a lot of nominal 'content providers' bulk up their content flow with hasty recapitulations of content elsewhere; that this activity avails them at all is, I believe, in particular, indicative of an unfilled niche in content aggregation. One frequently sees, out in the boonies of the not-directly-for-profit internet, knowledgable and useful summaries and introductions of content hosted elsewhere. Fleshed out more thoroughly with a contextualization of what something means, how and why it matters, and what it should lead the reader to anticipate, such material could facilitate reader access to expert opinion and information that would otherwise be beyond them.
As another example, editorial oversight, in particular, is in a state of near-crisis, everywhere. This is crucial, as it is the lynchpin of journalism. A different model of quality assurance would be transformative.
TBH most of the content on theintercept feels pretty cyberpunk to me though...
That's Wired magazine.
But like another posted said, just go do it and see if it attracts an audience IMO.
1) Apolitical. No editorializing. No political opinions what so ever. Just the absolutely facts.
That's it. There is enough out there already that you're way behind the curve. However, IMHO, if you produce something that is apolitical, and stays on the facts without allowing your personal political ideology to bleed through, it would be really wonderful.
Not that there's anything wrong with what you're suggesting, but it sounds like you're at the city counsel meeting for the new zoo, and you're saying "OK, but no animals."
What this actually means in my experience is "Don't challenge my politics". It's quite impossible to report facts while not considering the political implications. I've seen articles try to do this, and they wind up spending half their wordcount talking around some mysterious, unspeakable "thing".
Try this at home! Write a "just the facts" story about say, Facebook's mind interface and show it to someone who profoundly disagrees with you politically, and not just on the meaningless tribal hot-button issues like flag burning or something.
I'm on the Left, but I personally would rather read a good piece from National Review or Reason where they don't pussyfoot around their politics and give the facts in full context (though I find Reason unbearably smug).
do it
If I can make one suggestion, it would be to honestly ask yourself if you are able to get and curate this content in a way that'd be compelling for others and not just yourself. If it seems like that may not be the case, perhaps get others involved in helping to curate? Not sure if that's the answer.