[GNU/consensus] Under-estimated forms of social networking [1] retro-computing

[hellekin]

Social networking didn't start with the so-called Web 2.0.  It also
pre-dates the Internet.  Social networking appeared with humans, and one
could argue, with life itself.

But let's stick to online social networking.  There appears to be a
resurgence of low-tech, old-school social networking based on a
combination of old technology and spontaneous cooperation.

If you don't already, you should know about Telekommunisten's *Thimbl*,
a distributed micro-blogging platform that leverages that good old
finger command to turn your .plan into your own status update [0].  Last
March, when the outcry spurred that Turkey censored Twitter, Baruch
Gottlieb wrote an insightful article titled: "Twitter is like Coca
Cola", where he denounced the conflation of ideas between free-trade and
freedom [1].

Quote: “The reason a platform like Thimbl is not being used right now to
circumvent official Turkish censorship is because it does not have the
finance capital investment necessary to be able to provide the extent
and ease of services any web-user could use. The web could offer a
plethora of federated, distributed, and also publicly- and
commonly-owned-and-managed networked messaging platforms, a beautiful,
diverse landscape of services whereby users could choose myriad
alternative paths to the people they wish to reach or, if desired,
broadcast to the whole freedom-loving world.”

Now, a few weeks ago, Paul Ford created tilde.club, that's mushrooming
around a very simple idea: user pages on a web server [5].  The idea has
been largely regarded as obsolete by the programming community, on the
ground that many keyboards around the world do not provide the tilde
sign (~), and that makes it difficult for them to use.  Still, the
project is booming, and "Tilde servers" are sprouting around the
Internet, providing a simple *nix machine with user accounts that
rapidly becomes community-operated.  A crucial part of this movement is
the focus on keeping things simple, civil, and fun [2].  If you liked
the Super Dimension Fortress [3], you'll appreciate this new incarnation
of command line bliss.  It's social network like it's 1993 [4].  It's
also a perfect platform to run Thimbl!

If you like the retro-computing idea, you should have a look at a few
resources: the eternal irational.org, the recent retro-computing work of
Olia Lialina [7][8], and for 8bit music fans, the one and only
http://www.micromusic.net/

All this demonstrates that social networking is before anything else
about socialization of humans.  It's certainly something developers tend
to forget when they start diving into technical issues such as
protocols, bootstrapping secrets, group messaging, and scalability.

I leave you with a quote from { brad brace } <address@hidden>, of the
12Hr-JPEG Project: [6]

“Autonomy is not a fixed, essential state. Like gender, autonomy is
created through its performance, by doing/becoming; it is a political
practice. To become autonomous is to refuse authoritarian and compulsory
cultures of separation and hierarchy through embodied practices of
welcoming difference... Becoming autonomous is a political position for
it thwarts the exclusions of proprietary knowledge and jealous hoarding
of resources, and replaces the social and economic hierarchies on which
these depend with a politics of skill exchange, welcome, and
collaboration. Freely sharing these with others creates a common wealth
of knowledge and power that subverts the domination and hegemony of the
master's rule.”

==
hk

[0] http://thimbl.net/
[1] http://telekommunisten.net/2014/03/25/twitter-is-like-coca-cola/
[2]
https://medium.com/message/tilde-club-i-had-a-couple-drinks-and-woke-up-with-1-000-nerds-a8904f0a2ebf
[3] http://sdf.org/
[4] http://retronet.net/
[5] http://tilde.club/~ford
[6] http://www.eskimo.com/~bbrace
[7] http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/archives/5118
[8] http://1x-upon.com/

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature