If they were book titles, I’d rather read the first though.
Cusick (C.IM)What should I have been reading in 2017 to have heard about the #fediverse five years earlier?
I clearly need to upgrade my sources of information.
Maybe all of them.
#feditips #newhere #eternalseptember #twittermigration #diversity #reading #histodons #news #indieweb #openweb #foss #web #masto #fedilab #fedi22
I'll rephrase:
I'm a heavy reader.
The volume of what I read online spiked substantially from 2017-2020 while I worked at Longreads. Before that, I was in publishing and the book industry for years. I've been thinking about how writing reaches a general audience for nearly a decade.
My question is not:
How stupid am I?
or
How stupid are millions of people, who all lived under a rock until last week?
My question is:
What publication or website would I have needed to be reading in 2017 that covered new fediverse developments so regularly and exhaustively that if I so much as looked at it that year, I would not have missed the work you were all doing?
Personally, as a favorite major source, I’ve been reading and keeping up with the IndieWeb community (indieweb.org, their wiki, newsletter, and chat) since about 2014. Their community, while relatively small, is large and diverse enough that I’ve seen and been exposed to a variety of technologies, online movements, and even social movements in the last several years that I’m sure I would have never seen in the mainstream until after the sea changes had already occurred. Without an insignificant amount of attention they also manage to do it all with a flourish of kindness and care.
The secondary issue isn’t just seeing or hearing about it, but also having the bandwidth to delve into it, explore it, make sense of it, or even do something about it. I might posit that IndieWeb is working on something even more powerful and subtle than the Fediverse idea, but that it’s not quite ready for mass consumption (yet).
If I had to choose a single source to optimize for time and attention across a variety of sources and topics, I might recommend following Kevin Marks (also at @KevinMarks) who consistently sees and finds some of the best in technology that’s out there.
On the flip side, I’m sure that there are a variety of your own sources that you consume that may prefigure other changes and shifts. If you throw them over, it’s possible that you’ll missing seeing something else that may have otherwise been more obvious. Again, you have to adjust your time and attention to things which matter most to you.
Long thread – buckle up. TL:DR; yes, you should join Mastodon. But you should stay on Twitter as well. What we need are more and different online communities, not just an exodus from a troubled platform.
— Ethan “no blue check before it was cool” Zuckerman (@EthanZ) November 4, 2022
Matthew Kirschenbaum (Twitter)Unspoken in all the academic flutter about leaving Twitter is this simple truth: I’ve spent a decade and a half (!!) building reputation capital (to what end, you can judge) in this place. If I leave, NONE of that is portable. It is my labor, and I’m not abdicating it lightly.
— Matthew Kirschenbaum (@mkirschenbaum) November 1, 2022
Total today: 2,846 words
Total for the month: 2,846 words
You can also find me on micro.blog if you move there. It’s a spectacular, healthy platform and community that would appreciate your contribution and presence. I recommend it highly.
If you need help finding an “exit”, I’m both happy and well-equipped to not only suggest but to provide direct technical help. Reach out in any way that feels most comfortable to you.
