Why have a website?

This is a question I’ve asked myself a while already. So far throughout my life, I’ve found the anonymity of the internet rather comforting. Why should anyone be able to connect my name to what I write online? Or look up who I am?

For the most part, I still believe that it’s better to just stay anonymous. However, as outlined below, there are some benefits of using one’s own real name - and a website allows me to do that exactly the way I want, under my own terms.

No social media

I try to avoid social media as much as I can, especially if they rely on an ad-based business-model. Hordes of engineers optimizing algorithms to keep eyeballs glued to the screen as much as possible - and just as many data engineers trying to squeeze out every last bit of harvestable data to sell to the highest bidder: No thanks, I’d rather do without.

Unfortunately, this also means that I’m essentially completely “unsearchable” - if anyone happens to search for me on the internet, they’re likely to find nothing, or worse, find someone with the same name and mistake them for me (which has already happened in the past).

A website at least makes me findable on the internet, while only providing data to the harvesters that I consciously allow them to have.

Thoughts and ideas, in writing

I do have opinions and thoughts on many things - writing them down helps to flesh them out and forces me to reflect on my own views. If they’re put out online, they’d better be thought through properly; after all, they’re public now. Primarily, I’m of course writing for myself - frankly speaking I’d be surprised if anyone else bothered to read anything I write. However, if anyone happens to stumble upon it and finds it useful - all the better!

So, here we go!

Not quite sure yet where this leads. The current idea is to have an about-page with a bit of information about me, a contact-page so someone could contact me if they’re so inclined - and a little blog, of which this is the first entry. Maybe some pieces on some technical topics follow, maybe some political rambling, or whatever else goes through my head.

Let’s just get this started and see where it goes :)