A letter before you depart

Dear friend,

it seems like you have decided to turn your back on those walled gardens and set sails to enter uncharted territory. A world without walls, an open world, a world of beautiful chaos. At least for today, I don’t intend guiding you out of the safe harbour onto the open, endless sea. Today, my only intent is sharing a few thoughts, before you depart.

As a wise man on Madeira once said, it’s not so much about having the right answers, it’s about asking the right questions. While I’m not certain whether I have found the right questions myself by now, let me share the current set with you:

• What causes the discomfort that drives you out of the walled garden onto the open sea?

• Are you trying to transfer from one walled garden to the next one, where the difference being a slightly friendlier colour on the wall?

• What are you hoping to find on the open sea that walled gardens cannot provide?

• What are you willing to sacrifice for freedom (of speech)?

• What will you need to keep the ship afloat?

• How will you react when you find yourself in the middle of a storm?

I sincerely believe that it’s worthwile taking a step back before departing to reflect on the big picture and the underlying paradigm shift between walled gardens and nostr. This is not about building competitors to broken systems, this is not about mimicking centralised services, this is not about repeating the same mistakes over and over.

This is about building a new world, an open world without walled gardens and data silos.

Onwards!