The Way It Works?
The infamous description of what the internet is and how it all works as described by Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, with a refresher:
Series of Tubes via Wikipedia
It is arguable that the analogy is not as ridiculous as it sounded. That is, while it was humorous to hear stated as such, the actual comparison he was making, between a large truck versus many tubes to carry “material” from here to there, isn’t exactly misleading. It isn’t completely correct, either, beginning with Information Theory and Claude Shannon et al. and then a host of cables and transcievers and protocols that move the material around through these electronic tubes… but the imagery certainly left a mark on the public consciousness regarding our technological backbone.
Should we laugh that off and get on about our day (even this many years later), or with Net Neutrality and Big Tech and 5G and Satellite Connectivity (not to mention GPS and cell site triangulation) and whatnot all making news but not necessarily making for clear understanding. We have only to look at what The Algorithms have done to public discourse to see what might come when the humans using the internet lose themselves completely to the content flying at them.
This Episode
MyTubes via Anchor.fm
Recorded 18 June 2021, Published 21 June 2021
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Roll Our Own?
As mentioned, there are many options out there that enable anyone to roll their own online presence. Why are we not using them more often and more broadly?
The challenges appear to be:
Discovery. How do people find my content?
Engagement. How do my friends, family, and customers, find me again?
Conversation. Does anyone else use the platforms I’m using and can we interact with these?
People continue to use Facebook and complain about it because that is where their friends and family are, so they get all three of these challenges addressed by sticking with Facebook. Same goes for Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram, messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and the list goes on.
One path to rolling your own online presence, is “bootstrapping” from the likes of Facebook and Twitter, drawing your friends and followers to your own places. Perhaps you manage your own website with blog and photo and video sharing and other features, or perhaps you operate a storefront on your website. If items on your website are shareable URLs, then you and your fans and followers can certainly share links to Facebook and Twitter and they will appear just as any other shared links do.
Messaging platforms abound (Telegram, Signal, and Matrix are most interesting where we sit here, your mileage may vary). Email newsletters such as the one you’re reading now can be published from your own site (foreshadowing?) or through minimally-invasive platforms like Substack, Revue, paper.li, and more commercial offerings like ConstantContact and MailChimp and many others.
Decentralized conversations can take place with peered NNTP servers, if you’re really interested in your content surviving cancellation. Doing this with a blockchain is interesting, but Usenet has been running since 1982 with peers all over the place! Yes, to this day, you can read news.
We here at FFS Talk are going to lay down the law right here and now: what works is having online agency, with control over what you publish, what, and when (and how, and to whom!). What does not work is handing over that agency to commercial profit centers with zero regard for you and your online experience.
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