About
Hi. My name is Martin Redfern. I’m a journalist and web developer interested in the social and economic application of information resources across distributed networks.
This website is an attempt to evaluate the ratio of lucid signal relative to uncritical noise in the hyperbole surrounding online social media as well as a record of my musings on matters such as open standards, data portability and web accessibility.
It is also a repository of anything relevant and interesting I find during my travels in hyperspace, including synopses of significant developments as well as enabling links to external resources for those who wish to dig deeper.
Expect to find interoperability discussed alongside intellectual property rights, crowdsourced news aggregation compared with search engine optimisation and collaborative content production methods butting up against intermediating paywalls.
This is also an experiment to test the veracity of claims made by new media proponents about the benefits of network effects. The sidebar includes links to, and content retrieved from, web services I interact with elsewhere, the use of which I will monitor to assess the extent to which visitors to this site make connections via these means.
I will also keep records of the routes by which people arrive here to see how effective similar cross-referring links are elsewhere.
I am hoping to discover not only that network nodes can successfully be created without financial or social capital, but also that hyperpersonal news streams can contribute something truly useful to our understanding of the wider web, as well as the world beyond.
I further hope to confirm that the network mode can indeed be distiguished from contemporary neoliberal praxis, and that the assumption that unregulated financial markets behave the same way as neutral data networks is finally being challenged for the greater good.
If you would like help with an online project of your own, you can commission my web strategy, design and development services at redfernwebdesign.com. Otherwise please simply get in touch to find out more.