SpencerJul 1, 2023
I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but I think more people should understand a little bit about how the internet works. I think it's good that people are confronted with some technical difficulty to use the Fediverse, that it's not all hidden behind layers of slick UI.

There's room to grow, of course. I'm not here to say things are perfect. And, at the same time, I believe that the ongoing obfuscation of the underlying technologies of our modern world is a serious danger. It's part of why so many people think AI is "magic", for instance; that's part of a history of code and algorithms being regarded as superhuman, which itself is sustained (in part) by a lack of knowledge of how code works.

It is empowering to understand the basics of electricity and plumbing, or bike or automotive repair. It is empowering to understand the basics of programming and the internet. I don't get to decide for you that you must understand any of those things, and there are many different levels of understanding, but I believe we are stronger as individuals and communities when we understand, on some level, the tools that we interact with daily.
MicahJul 2, 2023
Show threadSpencer
I mention communities here because otherwise this quickly folds into more rugged individualism: "to be a Good Citizen, you must have these core competencies." That's not what I want to encourage.

So many of us rely on the convenience of prepackaged internet services for the same reason we rely on prepackaged food: we either don't have the time or energy to devote to doing it ourselves (likely because we have to spend much of that time and energy on working to afford necessities), or we don't have the skills to do it ourselves (possibly because building those skills would require an investment of time and money, and as previously mentioned, those are needed for survival). You can't really break that on your own, because the stress of trying to live a life as an isolated individual is the source of the problem.

No one person can know everything. I don't know how to knit. My skills in house electrical work are basic, and in plumbing, minimal. There is so much out there to know and practice that I don't expect any human to be good at it all.

This can't be broken as individuals. We break it as communities, by sharing our surpluses and learning from others.
Jul 1, 2023 at 11:26pmWeb