What is Ghost (and why does it matter)?
Hey there - first and foremost, thanks for taking the time to read this. More likely than not, if you’re here, you’re someone that I’ve worked with previously (and hopefully found that to be a valuable experience in one way or another).
“So, what is this?”
Well, this is the Ghost blog/newsletter site for Hello Industries, the new strategy… agency (? consultancy? - I’m still workshopping that bit) from yours truly, Gray Blue. Ghost as a platform more specifically is pretty similar to Substack - y’know, the newsletter platform that everyone’s jumped to, that you’re likely subscribed to in more ways than one, and has been raking in the cash.
What sets Ghost apart from Substack are a couple of key features that are what drove me to choose this platform specifically - and those features point directly at some of the key factors that I believe fully we should all be making when we’re building the stack for a new product or digital experience.
One - Ghost is open source, and not-for-profit. It’s a fully feature rich platform with all the bells and whistles, but not one that is operating as most contemporary platforms do - is: taking on huge amounts of investment (debt), selling based on hyperbole, or trying to drain every last dollar from me - or you - to make an exit for their investors.
And second, building on that key fact - they’re not here to openly platform and profit from some of the worst of the internet, as Substack has previously chosen to do - and while they’ve messaged to changes in their policies here and there, it just hasn’t quite sat right with me.
The point I’m trying to make here is that when I decided to start Hello Industries, a lot of it came from a place that so many of us who have worked within “tech” have given lip service to, but ultimately end up turning a blind eye towards - we have the power to choose what technologies we use, and do not have to accept that the one getting the most attention is by default the best/only option out there. And this is something we’ve all seen play out in both personal and professional settings - the eternal hyperbolic hypecycles of technology, the loudest player in the room getting all the attention, and the passive acceptance of ‘well, this is just the way it is’.
I began this new endeavor to help break down those ‘this is just how it is’ points of view and re-approach our human, individual agency in how we drive the creation and use of new technologies, and where we can make conscious, thoughtful, and principled choices in what tools we want to use. Not to be holier-than-thou - I’m not Mr. Rogers, and yes, the “individual responsibility” mindset that was created by oil companies to get us to shift the blame of climate change to ourselves is of course a blatant fallacy, but when and where we can make small choices & practice what we preach (hopefully compounding over time and volume) - well, why wouldn’t you?