What is there to fear?

I fear the loss of the web. I fear that in the stampede toward mobile platforms and the incredible interactivity therein, the next generation of information, personal expression, and publishing is being locked away, kept by individuals, and that much of it will never escape.

I fear that in the desperate rush to ‘save’ the web platform from mobile natives, through rapid advances in JavaScript and client-side capability, we’ll lose the openly interlinked fundamentals of the web, that information will disappear, obscured behind custom browser code nested in a diverse array of content delivery networks, gone the moment some intermediary stops paying the bills.

I fear the people who regard this new fragility as a feature that protects their investment in network infrastructure.

I fear that those who fight for the deregulation of the industries they disrupt will later fight to deregulate the internet itself of network neutrality just as soon as they are powerful enough to entrench their commercial advantage.

I fear that for all the work we still have to do to improve the diversity of participants in our industry, we’re just a few short selfish steps from throwing it all to the same media juggernauts that ruined television and radio.

I fear that it is inevitable someone will be successful in dismantling the BBC.

I fear that while I do a job building someone else’s vision, I might be missing the opportunity to build my thing.

I fear not knowing what my thing is.

I fear that I might never know.

I fear that when I do figure it out, it will fail.

I fear the consequences of being too comfortable, whilst day-to-day I am immensely comfortable.

I fear because none of my professional skills interface with the natural world. Everything that I can build is atop a dozen lower level human inventions. Programming languages atop APIs and frameworks ad infinitum, atop processor instructions, atop electrons, atop the refined generation of electricity.

I fear that I’d be useless in a natural disaster, because no-one is going to need a website.

I fear that I’m over-thinking this stuff.

I fear that I’m not thinking about it enough.

I fear that I’m not alone in my fears, and that others might have already given up, and moved to take advantage of their fears being realized.

I fear that my fears are someone else’s goals.