Hi Mel - great to see this in my inbox. I abandoned twitter a year ago for similar reasons to the ones you mentioned. I have missed a lot of the smart and funny conversations even as i never regretted my new twit-free life so if is good to know i’ll be hearing from you thru this more often.
I particularly liked you simmons quote about the web. i have been thinking something similar for a while, yearning for web1.0 like an old bastard gen x.
i am going to try to track down that Media Capitalism Hegemony in the Age of Mass Deception book in some library somewhere. it sounds like a crack!
One thing I've been pondering, especially after arriving at Mastodon, is that the platform era has made online sociality easier in many ways – easier to find people; easier to say things; easier to share things – but the price of that ease is capture.
It reminds me how in 'Watership Down' the rabbits show up at a warren where all the rabbits are sleek and complacent and don't question why they're fed lettuce and carrots rather than eating grass, or why some of them go missing every so often.
Web 1.0, and even early web 2.0, was harder to use and you had to skill yourself up and find workarounds for things that weren't there using the affordances that were there.
Teaching writing and editing for digital media I have really noticed in the last year that certain ideas about digital media are simply no longer intuitive to students: chiefly, the distinction between a 'front end' accessed by users, and a 'back end' controlled by content creators.
Because so many platforms these days use the same interface to create and to consume content, and searches and algorithms provide a lot of the discovery functions, people are losing the underlying impetus to structure things themselves, to categorise things, and to manually build connections.
When you arrive on Mastodon and you're like "where is everyone?" and "why is it so quiet here?" it's a real shock to realise you are no longer being steered and fed by algorithmic currents. I saw a survey of Mastodon users and a lot of them were Gen X, because older internet users still have those residual skills.
But I liked what Simmons was saying about how technology has advanced so much in the past, say, 20 years, that we can turn the old ways to new and generative purposes now.
i know what you mean about the ease of use of platforms. i am aware that in my lionising of web 1 there is a lack of consideration about the slight impenetrability of the web back in the 90s.
i feel like there is a lot to unpack in your reply - i will muse on it for a while i think. I have nothing coherent to offer but i think i can feel some seeds beginning to germinate.
Hi Mel - great to see this in my inbox. I abandoned twitter a year ago for similar reasons to the ones you mentioned. I have missed a lot of the smart and funny conversations even as i never regretted my new twit-free life so if is good to know i’ll be hearing from you thru this more often.
I particularly liked you simmons quote about the web. i have been thinking something similar for a while, yearning for web1.0 like an old bastard gen x.
i am going to try to track down that Media Capitalism Hegemony in the Age of Mass Deception book in some library somewhere. it sounds like a crack!
hope you are well this fine morning.
One thing I've been pondering, especially after arriving at Mastodon, is that the platform era has made online sociality easier in many ways – easier to find people; easier to say things; easier to share things – but the price of that ease is capture.
It reminds me how in 'Watership Down' the rabbits show up at a warren where all the rabbits are sleek and complacent and don't question why they're fed lettuce and carrots rather than eating grass, or why some of them go missing every so often.
Web 1.0, and even early web 2.0, was harder to use and you had to skill yourself up and find workarounds for things that weren't there using the affordances that were there.
Teaching writing and editing for digital media I have really noticed in the last year that certain ideas about digital media are simply no longer intuitive to students: chiefly, the distinction between a 'front end' accessed by users, and a 'back end' controlled by content creators.
Because so many platforms these days use the same interface to create and to consume content, and searches and algorithms provide a lot of the discovery functions, people are losing the underlying impetus to structure things themselves, to categorise things, and to manually build connections.
When you arrive on Mastodon and you're like "where is everyone?" and "why is it so quiet here?" it's a real shock to realise you are no longer being steered and fed by algorithmic currents. I saw a survey of Mastodon users and a lot of them were Gen X, because older internet users still have those residual skills.
But I liked what Simmons was saying about how technology has advanced so much in the past, say, 20 years, that we can turn the old ways to new and generative purposes now.
i know what you mean about the ease of use of platforms. i am aware that in my lionising of web 1 there is a lack of consideration about the slight impenetrability of the web back in the 90s.
i feel like there is a lot to unpack in your reply - i will muse on it for a while i think. I have nothing coherent to offer but i think i can feel some seeds beginning to germinate.
thanks mel.