The Medium That Could Have Been

Neural nets and spinner racks

I’m not a fan of Medium’s new rules on collections.

This isn’t for the usual reasons, that this is the Internet and change is bad. No, my objections stem from the “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til its gone” rule.

The rules change is understandable. It indicates a desire to make the whole of Medium more navigable for readers. To answer the question: where would I find “X.” Instead of finding a popular piece splattered all over the services’ collections each collection becomes more singular. Artisanal, if you will.

Here’s what I think is being lost:

Imagine that each post on this service is a single node in a vast network. Some of them carry vital signals, others are so much noise. The worth of each one is made apparent by the number of connections that it has to other nodes in the network. If it sounds like I’m replicating the underlying logic behind Google’s search engine its because I am.

There’s a missed opportunity to create a more transparent version of search rank while also giving a structure that is more conscious and navigable than Tumblr’s reblogging and favorites. A view could be made that shows how articles exist within different collections, creating a Venn diagram of ideas. A proto-map of the Internet’s own neural network. A guide to how the collective “we” of Medium writers and collection editors think about things.

Instead the new Medium will be a magazine spinner rack. Everything in its right place.

Somehow, that just doesn’t feel like an interesting or elegant addition to the way we communicate online. It feels like a cop out.