Daily note for 4 July 2023

Whenever Catherine Howe posts, it’s usually a good idea to read it: https://curiouscatherinehowe.medium.com/taking-the-red-pill-c30839bedb7f

More Twitter woes: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/07/03/everything-continues-to-be-going-just-great-at-twitter

“So where are we all supposed to go now?” https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/3/23782607/social-web-public-apps-end-reddit-twitter-mastodon

This is a good and challenging read on what even is an online community these days “The End Of Platform-Centric Strategies” https://www.feverbee.com/communityeverywhere/

Yet another note taking application for me to tinker with: https://www.qownnotes.org/

THIS from Dave Winer: “I wonder if now what I’ve been trying to do with RSS, blogging and podcasting, get underneath the bigco’s and live on a plane that doesn’t require any one of them, makes a bit more sense now.” It sure does http://scripting.com/2023/07/03.html#a143645

More fedi-fun: run your own YouTube clone with PeerTube. Sounds like a good way to bankrupt yourself if you aren’t careful – https://joinpeertube.org/

“Marc Andreessen Is (Mostly) Wrong This Time [about AI]” https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-marc-andreessen-labor-politics/

Twitter

The latest ridiculous behaviour from Twitter seems to genuinely be sending the site into a death spiral, which saddens me in a lot of ways. I’ve been on there since the early days, and I’ve built a reasonably sized following on there as a result. I don’t really have anywhere else where I can easily put things that a sizable chunk of the people I’d like to see them would actually have a chance of doing so. But it’s more than that: Twitter was never just a channel, it was also a place I made actual friends, folk who I speak to regularly. Loose communities formed, dispersed, and reformed as and when they were needed. Looking back, those who were saying that Twitter wasn’t really a company, it was a bit of internet infrastructure, were probably right, but nobody listened.

So now there are hundreds of alternatives sprouting up, including the Instagram based Threads which is due to be released on Thursday. Bluesky seems popular, Mastodon is doing well within its slightly dorky niche. But what they all lack is the moment. It’s 2023, not 2007 when all this seemed so new and exciting; it’s not 2010 when the whole world seemed to wake up to what was possible on sites like Twitter. Without that excited, exploratory, experimental surge, I’m gloomy about the prospects of any of these places filling the gap that Twitter did, uniquely. Imperfectly, but uniquely.

If someone, somehow, managed to lift my whole Twitter network and shift it into a different thing, I would jump there like a shot. In the meantime, I think I will keep dabbling, but also spending time on more personal, and less ephemeral, spaces like this blog – and maybe make use of the newsletter more.

Daily note for 3 July 2023

First day in my new job over. Am enjoying the feeling of getting to know my new surroundings, and using that new job motivation to start various balls rolling.

Jukesie on ‘minimum viable unconference’ https://digitalbydefault.com/2023/06/30/minimal-viable-unconference/

“Twitter bug causes self-DDOS tied to Elon Musk’s emergency blocks and rate limits: “It’s amateur hour”” https://waxy.org/2023/07/twitter-bug-causes-self-ddos-possibly-causing-elon-musks-emergency-blocks-and-rate-limits-its-amateur-hour/

I do really enjoy podcasts, and I love that it’s remained an open system. But in terms of them paying for themselves, it worries me slightly that all the ads on podcasts are for other podcasts, which doesn’t seem awfully sustainable.

What if failure is the plan? https://zephoria.medium.com/what-if-failure-is-the-plan-2f219ea1cd62

Another one! Argh! https://t2.social/

“AI and the automation of work” https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/7/2/working-with-ai

Keeping on keeping on

Quick job update from me: after a fantastic year doing digital culture and capability stuff at Brum, it’s time for me to move on. Next up, I will be supporting Amanda Stevens at Lambeth with digital in social care, as well as helping figure out digital platform stuff more generally. Looking forward to getting cracking tomorrow!

Birmingham is a fabulous place to do digital and technology work, brilliantly led by Cheryl Doran and I will be watching them do more and more amazing things over the next few years. Thanks to all the team there for making my time so fulfilling! ❤️

Daily note for 1 July 2023

Our daughter Jade has launched a podcast with her friend at work. We are super proud of her, and you should definitely check it out and subscribe if you’re interested in what’s up with social media these days https://shows.acast.com/the-social-sisters-podcast

I think she’s more interested in people watching the YouTube stream than the audio, which just shows how younger people think differently about podcasts than grey beards like me https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-jPaF2wC1FExsh3Tjk1zIQ

I wrote a lengthy response to someone asking about decision making and governance in local government IT and digital. At some point I will write it up properly as a blog post, but in the meantime, here’s a copy and paste of it: https://app.simplenote.com/publish/zsmqVq

Am clearly loving Simplenote’s publishing feature. I’ve been looking at Notion again, but it does feel a bit over-features for my needs.

A deep dive (sorry) into the mess of that Titan submarine thing. It was never going to go well: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjvjdb/it-is-a-huge-vast-opportunity-how-oceangate-went-from-disruptive-startup-to-catastrophic-deepsea-failure

If you don’t love crazy stories about long lost consumer electronics, there’s something wrong with you. This is a belter: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3k34/2200-forgotten-vintage-computers-are-being-liberated-from-a-barn-in-massachusetts

I still mourn the loss of Google Reader. I used to star the things I liked and then something like IFTTT would add it to Del.icio.us, pump it out to Twitter AND add it to my blog for me: https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

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