Technology

We even had federations back then. Called them webrings. I'm not sure if I'm kidding.

Lol, and so GeoCities rises from its grave...

Then again, Neocities has been around for a little while now, so whatevs.

Yes, the web as it was before giant social media.

See also https://indieweb.org/

That occurred to me as I wrote it. The main difference is the controlled connectivity with other 'web sites'. There's also tumblr. I still have a site there, haven't touched it in years.

I think that the thing that should set his idea apart from a website is that it has a highly structured data structure and restful API which allows the data to be accessed, aggregated, and presented in a myriad of ways.

So yes, you could have a standard "social profile" presentation front end which looks just like a geocities site, or Facebook page, or Friendster page or whatever.

But you could also add all your friends into a presentation layer that gives you a Facebook, Twitter, or instagram like feed, all federated from the single source of data they maintain as a federated social profile.

It's actually a pretty damn genius idea IMO.

i really don't like this attitude, and i see this it pop up around here fairly frequently. its kind of elitist? classist? i'll try to articulate myself here, though its not like... directly aimed at you, so try not to take it personally.

computer skills are just like being illiterate, but not in the way you're presenting. if somebody grows up to adulthood and they are illiterate, that isn't some sort of personal failing, its an indication that the people responsible for this person's care neglected their obligation to properly educate their child, or did not have the resources to provide such an education, because nearly everybody can become literate if somebody teaches them. the reality is that every single person on earth comes into this world without the ability to read, write, use computers, or do fucking anything at all, and its the responsibility of the people who do know these things to be open and kind and helpful so that they can learn. did you have the option to take computer skills classes in school? maybe? in a lot of places, no. did you come into technology effortlessly good at everything? probably not. lots of people aren't given the opportunity to hone these skills, or aren't given motivation to pursue them for themselves.

it's a problem in tech spaces. there is this subset of tech dudes who got in early and have made this weird, toxic culture of competition and exclusion that makes pursuing these skills actively difficult for newcomers. no. open source tech is for everybody. computer skills are for everybody. respond kindly and with understanding to those who do not already know these things, please. as much as it seems obvious or natural, it really really isn't. people need to be taught this stuff most of the time. i don't mean to be hostile, its just... the comparison to being illiterate is absurd to me, even if it was just a joke. when have you ever met a person who's illiterate who hasn't been systematically let down by their educators??? have you ever met somebody who's illiterate? they aren't that way because they're stupid, or don't want to learn, its usually something that happens to people who have been profoundly neglected by the systems supposed to protect them, who are poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized. the stigmatization of illiteracy is cruel to people who have already been deeply wronged, denied full access to language and our vast inheritance of knowledge by systems and people which find it inconvenient to teach them.

i sorta agree with you, it's a bummer that people don't have these skills, that so many don't have a strong grasp of how the machines that are so important to their lives even work. but that isn't their fault, it isn't their responsibility, and our response should be kind and accommodating. it should be a call to improve public education and provide resources to expand access to this knowledge, to build open source and demystify what has been mystified. that's part of why there are so many free educational resources for coding online. because this is a field of study that is not being taught to students by default, as it rightly should be.

i don't mean to go off on you specifically. lots of people don't think very deeply about this, you haven't committed a social justice crime or anything. but this is not a "people are dumb" problem. its an injustice. its a failure that we should do everything in our power to correct.

You could have services that host them for you that are easy to sign up for and use.

I agree it would have to be simple to be widely accepted. There would have to be an app to make set up easy. Clearly, self hosting would only be for the most technical of us. I've set up a dozen servers on bare metal VPS's and still have to follow instructions to get it right. For others, the set up app would also support exporting it to a service provider. Even so, it would probably be too much for many people.

Is there any extra info about the solid option? I went to their site and thinking to see about running a server on my home brew server to try it out. But, searching for “solid” doesn’t provide much relevant results. I’m wondering questions like, Do your files/information become basically a cloud storage drive? Is there a reason to use the solid server instead of just a NAS/home brew server with wan access?

Thanks for the link. That's almost exactly what I was envisioning. It's great to see such a project so far along.

Perhaps the best fit for the Earthling would be sharing and communicating with close life time friends and family that would have known you your whole life and remember what you said or did in your youth. It would be with them that one would want to share and reminiscence over old times and not people you just met on Beehaw as friendly they might be.