Socrates on writing:

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

The logical question, after hundreds of years of writing being the dominant way people learned, what the search engines like Bing and Google will do. I remember reading somewhere that the internet has caused people to forget information, but better remember how to find resources that will tell them that information. Seems as if history repeats.

If you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer, it seems like the cool thing to do is to join a co-working space. For a few hundred bucks a month, you too can sit in a room with other workers, connect to the internet and have access to coffee.

Contently recently published an article discussing The 6 Most Unique Co-Working Spaces in the World. For example, you could join a group of co-workers on a boat sailing around Thailand and Malaysia for a cool $1100 a week.

But why not the local library? There’s internet, power, desks, lights. And if your library is cool, the might sell coffee.

Best of all, it’s free.

Sure, there are downsides. The library’s general no-talking-above-a-whisper rule means you can’t make phone calls, for one.

I know libraries are currently trying to figure out their role in an age where the internet is eating into the its role as the keeper of the community’s information repository. Maybe it can help foster startups and workers of the gig economy.

Listen: You hear a lot of bad news about the journalism and publishing industry these days. There are serious challenges within the system. Let’s just say I took a peek at how stock in a newspaper company was performing recently, and it wasn’t pretty. What will be the future? Will we be all slaves to clickbait, or writing for cents per story thanks to that AI co-writer? I suspect there will always be a market, always be a demand. Even if it’s small.

A few months— nope, let’s be honest. A year or two ago I picked up a copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” And while I haven’t waded into the tome yet (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a great evening read), I did crack it.

By chance, I stumbled upon Chapter 14 of Volume Two, “The Industry of Literature.”

Democracy not only infuses a taste for letters among the trading classes, but introduces a trading spirit into literature. In aristocracies, readers are fastidious and few in number; in democracies, they are far more numerous and far less difficult to please. The consequence is, that among aristocratic nations, no one can hope to succeed without immense exertions, and that these exertions may bestow a great deal of fame, but can never earn much money; whilst among democratic nations, a writer may flatter himself that he will obtain at a cheap rate a meagre reputation and a large fortune. For this purpose he need not be admired; it is enough that he is liked. The ever-increasing crowd of readers, and their continual craving for something new, insure the sale of books which nobody much esteems.

Yeah, that account was written 200 years ago. It was a different time. But it leaves a question: How small can an audience be for a writer to make a living? I.F. Stone’s muckraking newsletter started with 5,200 subscribers, and it turned a profit from its first mailing. Local news, often under reported, has an audience of about that many people, if you are looking at writing for a mid-size town.

Startup costs could be minimal. A few hundred bucks max if it was an online publication. Dreaded print, if you found the right printer, wouldn’t be that much more. Heck, to save costs, the editors and journalists could distribute the paper themselves, how Print, the startup newspaper that covers Pittsburg’s east side, does it.

Perhaps there’s a need to tell stories to smaller audiences.