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Top-level
 Humanity is in dire need of a new operating system that rejects the old definitions of success. We need cooperation over competition; shared ownership over new monopolies; true openness over "let's just hold on to this bit of secret sauce to make money". The reason that people with power or a stake in "the way things are" tend to dismiss the fediverse (a bunch of hobbyists! can't scale! no business model!) is the precise reason to embrace it fully and wholeheartedly. 23 comments
@eloquence I recently posted on the topic, by way of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://mastodon.social/@koavf/113723070052242572 When speaking of scams, I often think about the 1973 novel "Momo" by Michael Ende. In it, cigar-smoking beings with grey skin in grey business suits persuade humans to "invest" their free time in a "Timesavings Bank". It's a scam: the Greys literally smoke people's time (the cigars!), robbing people of their rest, their imagination, their lives. In the real world, we, too, have fallen for a scam: the idea that if we place our faith in "the system", things will work out. They will not. We can imagine a world where every news organization has a fediverse server just like they have a webserver; where governments communicate through open protocols with the people who put them in power; where new kinds of cooperatives will arise naturally because the infrastructure is _built_ for cooperation. The fediverse is not a bunch of magic beans; it's built by people, after all. But it's much more fertile ground for the imagination than any other experiment in social media. @eloquence For more detail, it's a solarpunk story about the war against eco-fascism and climate change. The system in question is called OpenFederation: a decentralized web application for organizing direct democracy, mutual aid, and autonomous anarchist cooperatives.  @eloquence I'd rhather governments stopped existing instead of using the fediverse tbh @eloquence Momo is such a cool book π€ Read it years ago when still was a kid and still think about its concept time and time again @eloquence A fantastic novel. Like the books of His Dark Materials, or the Narnia books, enjoyable by both children and adults. My first experience with Ende's storytelling was indirect, through the movie adaption of The Neverending Story, and its (inferior) sequel. But when I was reading an English translation of the original novel about a decade ago, a friend asked me if I'd read Momo, and recommended it.  @eloquence it's perfect book about how we are lied about that we are short of time and that we should make up for it, not take time to enjoy life. It is 'productivity' anti thesis. Michael Ende is one of my heros. Neverending story and Momo are such a highlights of my childhood. Definitely a formative for my mind.  @eloquence I just quoted your post above for a suggestion I gave a few months ago. I wish @wikimediafoundation Communications Department could think more about it: @eloquence @wikimediafoundation I just saw the other topic related to the previously mentioned. I added my support: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Social_media#WMF_should_switch_from_X_to_Blue_Sky_or_Mastodon Thank you! I've been feeling a bit like a squeaky wheel on this topic. I and others brought it up on wikimedia-l a while ago as well; WMF then decided to set up a presence on wikimedia.social, but treated it as the "place where some nerds are" rather than an actual alternative. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed, especially as more folks raise the issue. Beyond rejecting X for the obvious reasons, there are huge opportunities for movement-organizing on fedi. @eloquence We have been so convinced that "more is better." We need to reacquaint ourselves with the concept of "enough." @eloquence 2/2 Not sure what you mean when you say the fediverse can't scale and why that would be a good thing. Like we should stop allowing new users or new instances to join? |
Gregory's Server
Incidentally, I found it somewhat amusing to discover that before executives started talking about "blue sky thinking", the term "blue sky" in a business context was primarily associated with fraudulent business ventures, which led to "blue sky laws" to protect investors.
I don't think Bluesky is a fraudulent venture, but I also don't think it is anymore imaginative than the modern use of the term in C-suites. It is simply business as usual -- blue sky, incorporated.