One day, in the future, I will have;
At this point I will have abandoned the world of personal branding and influencers and whatnot, and will likely post dispatches from my dusty old blog.
And I will be oh so happy.
(inspired by Jack’s astute observation — Wayback copy)
(update: part two)
Listening to James Nestor talk about the importance of breathing well took my mind, again, to my unease at the behaviour of certain parts of the Apple fan community who like to make cynical jokes about the Breathe feature on the Apple Watch.
Maybe we would all feel better if we spent less energy on desperate attempts to look clever in public and more energy on embracing such basic ideas as literally learning to breathe well.
There are two types:
I find myself more and more unsubscribing because of the first type, even if I like the show.
I’ve returned to thinking about the internet and what it is, in light of working on what it could be. Most recently I posted about the rat-like presence of Google.
Of course this is not disimilar to worrying about S3, Azure, and even Google’s own server hosting. Then take a look at technologies such as React, massive software development-based sites like GitHub, and even the ties between the open web and mega-companies like Samsung with regard to open source…
The internet, much like the real world, shows many paths to living life connected to all sorts of awful people with very few options for small, self-starting groups of people to truly establish themselves free from the hideous behemoths our societies have built over the past many decades.
I’m not discouraged by this. I simply believe you have to gain an understanding of the mountainous obstacles that stand before you, should you wish to overcome them at all.
This is a reply to @vivianlee:
You’ll have to excuse my ignorance here, but you could elaborate on the negative effects of hashtags? I’m new to the IndieWeb philosophy, and having just come from the likes of Twitter and Instagram, the lack of hashtags here has made it difficult for discovery. I’m wondering what the workaround is, and why hashtags would be a negative thing.
I’m not as well-informed on all of the technical aspects or any work that has been done to support this position – case studies, etc – but I do have a general view based on my experiences in the hashtag-heavy platforms vs. Micro.blog and my old days on message boards and the like.
A lot of the behaviour around hashtags for those with ill will is about tracking and campaigning at speed; using algorithms for trending to target and pile-on people and groups. It can also become easy to ruin a topic that has until that point been carefully curated by the people involved, whether through crude spambots or planned, targeted campaigns.
The flip-side of that is of course moderation, whether from the people running the platform or via account-based tools made available to each person. Whilst I’m not aware of what exactly could be done with such resources, I know for sure that either way it is likely to be a lot of work for such a small team.
There is also the question of priorities within the context of culture; are hashtags, with all of the associated work, what Micro.blog needs right now? From my experience this is the kind of mechanism that can quickly lead to significant unintended consequences and so the positive value – which is basically just discovery – needs to be carefully weighed against the costs.
As for the alternatives, on Micro.blog it’s a mix of direct-ish approaches;
and the in-direct approach that has become part of the culture of Micro.blog;
(Note: there is also a Micro.blog help page covering this subject)
These alternatives also work well with philosophies of the open web, which preclude the silos; specifcally, the idea of the open web as the great social network, where we use feeds, email, newsletters, and other such technology and platforms that are largely non-proprietary. This means greater agency, independence, control, and less manipulation for all involved; it becomes a lot less like everybody dumping their posts into a bucket of faceless, nameless content whilst parasitical entities take advantage of our ignorance and lack of ownership.
I don’t think hashtags are intrinisic to the destructive nature of the web, rather I am unaware of any way for a small team to harness their power without sacrificing the good of Micro.blog; the intention, the curation, the personal contact, the idea that we are all people sharing space with some degree of control, and choosing to take our actions no matter what they might be.
I have been without a PC for a number or days now, having actively removed PC activity from my daily routines weeks ago. Essentially, my phone and my watch are my only computers.
As a result, I have learned that I never had a tolerance for lengthy reading on a small screen in the first place let alone having not developed such a thing ever since owning my first smartphone.
This is the first time in over a decade that I have not used a PC on a daily basis, and whilst I yearn for a tool with which to work on @til the fact remains that this process has cleared my mind of an unhealthy reliance on the web as my only source for information and, well, just about everything else.
I am looking forward to the continued rediscovering of the good habits from my pre-online life and developing a much better balance of my time and energy in the future, should I ever own a PC again.
(Note: either way, iOS remains an unreliable tool for lengthy writing and I doubt that will ever change for me, for a whole host of reasons)
Today I Learned is now in maintenance mode.
I am currently sitting at our desk in what we once called the office. Now it’s the utility room. This change, like so many others over the past two and a half months, has been monumental and yet so small.
Lots of things are happening, some of which I may or may not talk about but altogether can be summarised thus: I’m finally taking my work seriously, giving it the space and resources needed to get the job done at a basic standard let alone anything approaching good. All in all, this is a good thing, and made all the easier due to lots and lots of changes since even before the COVID-19 pandemic became the wrecking ball of change with which we are all currently attempting to grapple.
As for Today I Learned, well, the unfortunate truth is that I do not have the resources to spare for its continued operation and so the recent hiatus has now become a full maintenance mode which, as the previously linked announcement states, means there will be no publishing of any kind for the foreseeable future.
I find it difficult to express my gratitude for all of the support from the Micro.blog community for Today I Learned. So I’ll just say this: if you’re feeling pessimistic about the web and the world in general, please take part in the Micro.blog community for at least a few months and you’ll find yourself living in an example of how the world can be a better place. Without this community I wouldn’t be in such a positive place as to handle monumental change and actually thrive, it’s as simple as that.
Over the next few months I’ll probably continue to be elusive as far as posting is concerned. At the moment I’m mostly reading feeds, reading in general, watching the various forms of video available via the web, and playing lots of video games. In many ways I’m in a maintenance mode of my own; I have increased the volume of input from the world, this amazing world we’ve made via the web, whilst simultaneously decreasing my output. This process has been… necessary. Vital even.
So I’m off to continue focusing on the most important parts of my life, and enjoying a summer of much needed self reflection.
I hope everybody who reads this is well and doing what is needed to live in this our strange pandemic-influenced time.
I’ll see you in the replies. 👋
The literal cost of using the modern web slapped me in the face just now. It got me thinking…
This is one of those things that inspires me to think about what life would be like if I gave up being as involved with the web as I currently am.
I could save the desktop for mostly offline work, with limited access to the web saved purely for uploading/sharing stuff, and then rely mostly on mobile computing. This could fit in with spending more time outside, taking my new main computer with me, and generally avoid the muck of tracking-based platforms of services.
IDK… maybe becoming “anti-connected” to some degree. Essentially reverse my general trend of the past decade and switch much more of my focus to the people near me. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as involved with the web because I simply wouldn’t have the time or other resources, as part of an intentional decision to free myself of the misery that is the modern web.
However! I could still work on TIL. I mean, the beauty of Micro.blog is that I don’t have to sell my soul to really understand it, test things out, etc.
A lot of these thoughts have become possible thanks to moving to Firefox. Between the Containers feature and lack of focus on the Google silo, it really has helped me to think about what I am doing on the web through a lens of pragmatism and with a greater degree of transparency.
It’s time for me to think about this in a real way, to make changes that are practical. I actually think it will help a lot with TIL, since it lines up nicely with the philosophies upon which Micro.blog was built. In particular it’s the idea of a “good web”, in which we have the ability to control our online presence and not have to accept a life lived as little more than value-based data, a faceless thing there to be used for the efforts of other people to increase their ill-gotten gains.
This is a lot of meta-style talk, which I didn’t want to spend so much time on in public posts. However, it is a significant process for me on a number of levels and I would like to have a public record of my thinking as I go through the process of making the aforementioned changes over the next few months.
It feels, at some level, that it lets the people in charge off the hook. Thoughts?
Having shared Euan Semple’s thought-provoking post, Adam got a fairly quick reply from Pete Brown which only further provoked me to once again consider a general viewpoint I have been wrestling with for the past few years.
An important point of context within these issues that is often neglected: these companies, this version of the web, a lot of it is US-centric. They are literally constructs made from the culture of the US, and whilst of course they are also built with a diversity of viewpoints I think it is vital to remember that there is a difference in how these things are built even compared to that which is most similar, for example Canada.
I don’t know, maybe I live in too much of a bubble of my circumstances in life but the fact remains that I have yet to meet people who are so desparately in need of the connected web on our own little island, as compared to seemingly large numbers of Americans for whom the internet has been something of a lifeboat. Not to say it isn’t significant here, of course it is, but rather that there is difference in the difference even between our two relatively similar nations… that the environment is different, there are different motivations for the various part of our societies, and that’s before we even get to Europe and further afield.
I’ve just never quite felt that if I were to sacrifice the internet my life would be inescapably ruined; at least with regard to the social, overly worked part of the internet where the silos and the like exist. As such I have never quite felt that this is necessarily a socio-economic aspect of our lives that requires constant and immediate care. In many ways, it truly is what it is and little else.
The firmer I become in my convictions that the independent web is the neccessary alternative to social media, the more likely I am to question that feeling.
Have the silos simply figured it out and we, as a species, inevitably trend to this system?
If so, then the independent alternative is surely a waste of time.
Life should be about people and if all of the people on the web are in the silos, then that is where we should be.
Sure, a bunch of people might reply to this – I have been very lucky to find a great community on Micro.blog, for example – and that might include lengthy replies with fiery disagreements to my conclusions.
But ask yourself: who will read that?
So why are we bothering?
Why do we build against the silos?
What makes the independent web – in its current environment that is hostile to the average user of silos – worth adopting, warts and all?
(I’m getting this bullshit out of my system.)
Potential Twitter set-up:
As far as settings go, that depends on how the above works out. If I end up following a larger group of people than intended (for example, if the pinned lists and RSS integration don’t work well, as I’m sure Twitter would prefer) there will be no retweets in my timeline, I’ll constantly keep the chronological option switched on, and will maintain a significant list of filters.
I love third-party apps but am convinced they’re not long for this world. Honestly, even with this specific set-up the whole point is to make it easier to stay away from the empty-headed, addictive use of a platform that is designed specifically to inspire that behaviour. As such, I’ll have time limits in place, which is a big part of my life anyway what with having more than one job and actual responsibilities with actual consequences if they aren’t fulfilled.
Oh, and if you’re reading this and follow me over there please don’t be offended if I don’t [pound-sign]FollowBack. That’s just now I use these things and that is unlikely to ever change.
OK. Let’s see if that has flushed this nonsense from my mind, at least in its current state of heistant wreckage.
Lately I continue to think about my social network conundrum.
I have wittled down my indecision to just Twitter. It’s easy enough for me to draw the line with regard to personal use of the other big social networks, at least for now.
All that’s left at this point is to weigh the effort of maintaining a non-terrible experience against losing the good people who are exclusive to that platform. Even with RSS, awesome smaller networks like that of Micro.blog, and newsletters the fact remains that a number of people are fun to follow blogging-wise and they do so exclusively on Twitter.
This is an issue I would like to resolve, at least for the foreseeable future. To some extent it is a waste of my time, a distraction, and not the good kind. This is exactly what I am determined to avoid as much as possible.
Anyway. Blogging about blogging. I’m super fucking original that way.
When it comes to mainstream silos vs the independent web and the growing options, this is my constant conflict:
God damn it this is all crap, not just ethically but the design is terrible; ads, unreliable performance, genuinely bad UI, etc.
VS
What does it matter; if the goal is to share to as many people as possible then just swallow the terrible option as a basic broadcasting tool whilst putting serious energy into the good options.
VS
Life is too short, just use the popular one, invest time and energy in physical spaces, and save the ethically minded digital activity for stuff like security and identity.
VS
Life is too short to NOT make the ethically good decision. Better to sacrifice some shallow things (in this case there are plentiful non-Instagram options for good and better photographers) and live a life knowing you made as many good decisions as possible.
We should be careful before copying everything from Twitter.
Manton had more to say about this today and I agree with him. Whether those of us who are driven in any way by ideological motives like it or not, the fact remains that copy-pasting functionality from the existing behemoths is a complete waste of time.
Why would anyone bother with your new thing if it just does what the existing thing does, only with fewer people? That is not an effective way to motivate people and we’re never going to change anything if we fail to understand how people are motivated to make changes in their lives.
Quick technical note: I have changed my email address.
My details can be found on my contact page, meanwhile the following addresses do not work:
@swoods.netI have saved all messages for ongoing conversations and will be replying from my new address in the next reply of the conversation.
I will also soon have a new address via my custom domain but my current address – simonwoodsliv@protonmail.com – will be the source of that, so all messages on that address will be unaffected by the custom domain change.
Apologies for the inconvenience caused by this update. I hope that Protonmail can remain viable for a long time.
A reply to the ongoing discussion about replies
Going back to at least earlier this year it seemed like the limit on replies was going to be shortened, or at least that was the plan, and if that does happen at any point then all of a sudden the whole “let’s start a conversation” dynamic is much different; perhaps people would be more inclined to take such conversations elsewhere (messaging services, email, physical space, etc) and so the value of the short-reply conversation (micro-convo if you will) stands alone.
There’s a chance with only short replies allowed that replies themselves will take on more of their own identity, and a core part of that will be the shorter replies themselves. Then they would be not just something that is so easily considered clutter. However, I do agree with Smokey that these issues could be better solved via timeline filtering, of which there is already a foundation (filtering out mentions to people you do not follow) and as compared to introducing a “like” system is much less likely to fundamentally alter the entire platform.
I also like John’s idea of “disappearing likes.” It reminds me of how Snapchat first became popular due to disappearing posts, except this could serve as less destructive version of “likes” in general.
Overall when it comes to cluttered timelines I’m not at all convinced that introducing a reply-wide change to the system is the best way to go, since it feels too much like shoving something on everybody because some people think of short replies as clutter. For those who do think this way, have you considered using RSS in conjunction with Micro.blog? I find it’s easier to get at the exact posts you want this way, rather than looking to turn the conversation host (Micro.blog) into something fundamentally different.
Right now replies definitely need some updates and I think this is one of the issues that ought to be addressed. Personally, as somebody outside of the Apple ecosystem I feel there are bigger problems; even short replies are hard work when it comes to just using the web but I think updates to the replies feature across all systems would be a great upgrade for Micro.blog as a whole.
I’ve just been reading twitter in my browser – it’s a bad procrastination habit but now I at least try to read good, creative, often positive things as a way to make it a good habit – and I prefer scrolling via the keyboard. The cursor is in the address bar and it is very difficult to get it out of there, maybe even impossible… this is a terrible design and surely only made to encourage people into just getting the app and, more importantly, only really using it on your phone/iPad.
It is utterly frustrating to see “everybody” (read: lots of mostly active people) using these silos, these services, and just going along with it like cattle. It is a wave of lazy living, lazy thinking, and fear-lead decision making that has brought us to a point wherein good stories on the web are now largely trapped within ecosystems that are increasingly designed to be prisons and little more.
The question is: just give up and go with the crowd, or continue to hold what you think is the better idea – in this instance: the open web, open standards, websites made to good standards, accessible postings, and the slow and steady growth of the technologies therein – in the hope that eventually our stories and ideas will become less trapped?
(Note: I originally wrote this on Slack, as part of a thread about Micro.blog as a name.)
I know naming isn’t easy but I think I find it hard because M.b gets used for the company, individual blogs, the app and the timeline respectively in the following sentence (although arguably the second “Micro.blog” should be “microblog”):
“When I post to my Micro.blog hosted Micro.blog using Micro.blog it gets cross-posted to Micro.blog”
– Matthew Lindfield Seager (@matt17r), in the Indie Microblogging Slack
I think part of the issue here, especially if you’re going to compare to social media silos, is that they are not interested in differentiating these things… whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, whatever… they are simply interested in people not ever thinking about the technical side of things.
Meanwhile, Micro.blog fully embraces the technical side of things yet is also driven by a desire to make things as simple as possible.
As such, tbh, things aren’t cleanly and easily tucked into a nice little marketable pocket of jargon. If people don’t like the inevitable downsides of social media silos then they’re going to have to at least become aware of things like “blogs”, “posts”, “microblogs”, and so on.
That doesn’t mean people have to become experts or even especially comfortable with these concepts but they will need to acknowledge that there is no easy, one-size-fits-all answer for posting and sharing things on the web. Maybe over time the language will get easier but I don’t think it’s going to be because the marketing improves; rather, it’s time for people on the web to become better citizens.
No one is forcing these game developers to take these jobs
– @frostedechoes, on the effects felt by developers when creating violent video games.
Whilst I understand this isn’t the core of Robert’s point, I will note that I see this kind of qualifier quite a lot across different issues, and I think it’s important for all of us to also make note of the fact that there is an agent influencing the decisions of, well, everybody. That agent is the socio-economic system, the culture we prop up with our many decisions, for which there is no current alternative. If we had a better alternative then things could be different; for example, introducing both universal healthcare and universal basic income would create significant foundations upon which we could all make better decisions.
To put it bluntly, in many cases these developers are in the USA and these terrible jobs are still preferable to having no job, almost entirely due to the punitive treatment of unemployment in said country.
Also, looking at what Jason has said, he ends with the idea of questioning whether to support certain art or not. Again, an easy thing, Jason is taking the much easier route of looking at this small insignificant piece… those pieces do nothing when compared to the foundational issues here, even if they are much easier to talk about.
I think people neglect to write blog posts because the feedback loop is not as tangible as the onslaught of (sometimes mechanical) likes or faves that you can receive on a social network.
– Daniel Jalkut, Blog a Little
It’s a shame people believe what those at Facebook, Twitter, and such like would prefer them to believe; specifically, just because the audience seems to be all on those closed networks that it is therefore the best option to just post everything there and never have an independent, self-owned option as the core of whatever you are posting.
Instead, it’ll be great even if people just change how they think about the whole system, to realise that the closed networks can be useful for specific types of broadcasting but that’s about it. Even then, with regard to messaging not only do we have feed technology but also email and the unbelievable flexibility of open web software as a whole.
It has been encouraging to see the influential voices of the web become louder about these issues in the past few years. It might not be obvious at first but the truth is that we can only build a better world if we learn from our history, identify the good in what we have done, and then attempt to build on that. I truly believe that we can maintain the internet as a force for good, specifically with the web, so long as we hold close to the values of independence, generous spirit, and free thinking; all of which are possible with a web that itself is as open and independent as possible.
#LongLiveTheOpenWeb is another good piece in a movement well worth your time, doubtless there will be more to come and we will all be here, ready to blog a lot.
There’s an interesting conversation here regarding Apple and support documentation, specifically with regard to what is missing.
This is embarrassing. “It Just Works” should more than cover documentation. I don’t know how many people I’ve read and heard in revered tone about “The Most Holy HIG” and so on… seriously, they are a trillion dollar company and don’t have the resources to make comprehensive guidance across ALL formats? That is utter bullshit and completely user hostile.
Oh, also, don’t forget that “you’re doing it wrong” will make an appearance from time-to-time whenever the executives have been lowered to our level in response to something on which the company has fucked up.
I see a lot of “they’re premium” whenever somebody brings up Apple being expensive. Irrespective of the realities of premium or not, Apple certainly screams premium with everything they do but the deep holes in their user documentation, whatever the format, is terrible and counter to even the slightest notion of a premium experience.
Don’t be hasty!
I was getting ahead of myself. Today I Learned is not going to stop – to be fair, that seemed unlikely anyway – but I did need to take a break, to take a few steps back and think about why it was that I felt the way I did; I was tired and in pain, generally feeling down, and none of it had anything to do with a need for TIL to stop.
Rather, I need to do two things;
I may or may not elaborate further on this in some form or another but I think that’s enough for now. The core of this post is to say that TIL is very much back on track, with updates and all, and I am committed to it – barring any major life-altering events – for at least another 12 months.
The ten days that were my unplanned break were illuminating to say the least. It feels good to be back.
I am no longer maintaining Today I Learned.
Having given the project a lot of thought, specifically within the context of my life the fact is that I do not have the resources with which to make this work. This is actually a realisation on a larger scale for me personally; insofar as I do not have room for any such project in my life.
I am a carer, that is my job, and attempting to have a second job as a remote worker is an effort that is simply beyond me; I have no way of doing that with minimal effort, rather I work as hard and with as much efficiency as possible and all of this simply doesn’t work.
A combination of factors leave me very much in the wrong place to attempt to continue with this effort and it is important for me to recognise this and move on. I still think Micro.blog and similar efforts are a much healthier, more sustainable alternative to the corporate silos that have come to dominate the web and hope to see more and more people come to the same conclusion.
The sites and account will remain but there will be no new activity at all. If anybody wants to take what’s there, well, it’s all easily copied anyway so there’s nothing new about that.
I’d like to thank everybody for your support with the project, from Jean and Manton through to those who replied to posts and so on; as usual, the community on Micro.blog has proven to be pretty damn good even in these early days. You’re all brilliant.
Now I will be taking a break from blogging and generally posting on the web, and taking my time to think about what I am doing next, if anything on top of my job. I have serious doubts if anything other than volunteering will fit into my life but who knows…
That’s everything for now.
Goodbye, Internet.
Only I have the key, and only I get to decide what’s allowed inside.
– Cheri Baker, My New Internet Habits
Cheri has found the exact kind of mental discipline I had spoken about at the end of last year.
My goals, similar to her own with regard to time spent online are nowhere near closer than when I first set them out on this blog. It should be no surprised to me, then that the first two months of this year have been marked by a general downturn in my mood, my overall health really.
This stops now.
Not only have I already deactivated my personal social media accounts barring Micro.blog, I have reset my RSS feeds and am in the midst of taking a knife to the throat of any excess with regard to email, task managers (read: Gabriel Santiago’s take on Jillianne Hamilton’s Can a Productivity Nerd Live Without a To-Do List?), and so on.
I am stripping away the noise, making firm decisions about my work set-up (minimised to better focus on the most immediate tasks), and filtering the crap away to stop it from getting into my mind.
Soon I hope to also report that I am reading more books, reading higher quality news, increasing my exercise, and getting much more writing done.
A question I have has been previously asked by somebody else on the Microsoft support forum thing, specifically: how can I create calendars using the Windows Calendar app.
From a “Microsoft Agent | Moderator”:
As of the moment, we’ll have to wait until there is an option for adding a new, personalized calendar to the Calendar app. This will be a great addition to the Calendar app, so we encourage you to submit your idea using the Feedback Hub app so that our developers can see it and consider adding this feature in future updates.
… in August, 2017.
I… this is seriously from the company once broken up because of its monopoly in computers.
It is breathtakingly stupid to see the fucking Calendar app not have a create calendar feature. I spend plenty of time with my iPad or Pixel and don’t have even one tenth the level of stress-induced headaches as I do with Microsoft’s software.
Now on my to-do list: