sudo-discuss

sudo-discuss@sudoroom.org

7 participants
7410 discussions

The Web We Lost — The Web We Make — Medium

by Romy Ilano

https://medium.com/the-web-we-make/1afe8b898455 The Web We Lost Anil Dash in The Web We Make 6 min read The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we've lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be. So here's a few glimpses of a web that's mostly faded away: Five years ago, most social photos were uploaded to Flickr, where they could be tagged by humans or even by apps and services, using machine tags. Images were easily discoverable on the public web using simple RSS feeds. And the photos people uploaded could easily be licensed under permissive licenses like those provided by Creative Commons, allowing remixing and reuse in all manner of creative ways by artists, businesses, and individuals. A decade ago, Technorati let you search most of the social web in real-time (though the search tended to be awful slow in presenting results), with tags that worked as hashtags do on Twitter today. You could find the sites that had linked to your content with a simple search, and find out who was talking about a topic regardless of what tools or platforms they were using to publish their thoughts. At the time, this was so exciting that when Technorati failed to keep up with the growth of the blogosphere, people were so disappointed that even the usually-circumspect Jason Kottke flamed the site for letting him down. At the first blush of its early success, though, Technorati elicited effusive praise from the likes of John Gruber: [Y]ou could, in theory, write software to examine the source code of a few hundred thousand weblogs, and create a database of the links between these weblogs. If your software was clever enough, it could refresh its information every few hours, adding new links to the database nearly in real time. This is, in fact, exactly what Dave Sifry has created with his amazing Technorati. At this writing, Technorati is watching over 375,000 weblogs, and has tracked over 38 million links. If you haven’t played with Technorati, you’re missing out. Ten years ago, you could allow people to post links on your site, or to show a list of links which were driving inbound traffic to your site. Because Google hadn't yet broadly introduced AdWords and AdSense, links weren't about generating revenue, they were just a tool for expression or editorializing. The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized, but by 2007 it was clear that Google had changed the web forever, and for the worse, by corrupting links. In 2003, if you introduced a single-sign-in service that was run by a company, even if you documented the protocol and encouraged others to clone the service, you'd be described as introducing a tracking system worthy of the PATRIOT act. There was such distrust of consistent authentication services that even Microsoft had to give up on their attempts to create such a sign-in. Though their user experience was not as simple as today's ubiquitous ability to sign in with Facebook or Twitter, the TypeKey service introduced then had much more restrictive terms of service about sharing data. And almost every system which provided identity to users allowed for pseudonyms, respecting the need that people have to not always use their legal names. In the early part of this century, if you made a service that let users create or share content, the expectation was that they could easily download a full-fidelity copy of their data, or import that data into other competitive services, with no restrictions. Vendors spent years working on interoperability around data exchange purely for the benefit of their users, despite theoretically lowering the barrier to entry for competitors. In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge company's site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do. Five years ago, if you wanted to show content from one site or app on your own site or app, you could use a simple, documented format to do so, without requiring a business-development deal or contractual agreement between the sites. Thus, user experiences weren't subject to the vagaries of the political battles between different companies, but instead were consistently based on the extensible architecture of the web itself. A dozen years ago, when people wanted to support publishing tools that epitomized all of these traits, they'd crowd-fund the costs of the servers and technology needed to support them, even though things cost a lot more in that era before cloud computing and cheap bandwidth. Their peers in the technology world, though ostensibly competitors, would even contribute to those efforts. This isn't our web today. We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich. But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be. BACK TO THE FUTURE When you see interesting data mash-ups today, they are often still using Flickr photos because Instagram's meager metadata sucks, and the app is only reluctantly on the web at all. We get excuses about why we can't search for old tweets or our own relevant Facebook content, though we got more comprehensive results from a Technorati search that was cobbled together on the feeble software platforms of its era. We get bullshit turf battles like Tumblr not being able to find your Twitter friends or Facebook not letting Instagram photos show up on Twitter because of giant companies pursuing their agendas instead of collaborating in a way that would serve users. And we get a generation of entrepreneurs encouraged to make more narrow-minded, web-hostile products like these because it continues to make a small number of wealthy people even more wealthy, instead of letting lots of people build innovative new opportunities for themselves on top of the web itself. We'll fix these things; I don't worry about that. The technology industry, like all industries, follows cycles, and the pendulum is swinging back to the broad, empowering philosophies that underpinned the early social web. But we're going to face a big challenge with re-educating a billion people about what the web means, akin to the years we spent as everyone moved off of AOL a decade ago, teaching them that there was so much more to the experience of the Internet than what they know. This isn't some standard polemic about "those stupid walled-garden networks are bad!" I know that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn and the rest are great sites, and they give their users a lot of value. They're amazing achievements, from a pure software perspective. But they're based on a few assumptions that aren't necessarily correct. The primary fallacy that underpins many of their mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a user experience complexity that hurts growth. And the second, more grave fallacy, is the thinking that exerting extreme control over users is the best way to maximize the profitability and sustainability of their networks. The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the people creating the next generation of social applications to learn a little bit of history, to know your shit, whether that's about Twitter's business model or Google's social features or anything else. We have to know what's been tried and failed, what good ideas were simply ahead of their time, and what opportunities have been lost in the current generation of dominant social networks. [Originally published December 2012.] Anil Dash I love NYC, tech & funk. You can see all the things I'm up to at http://anildash.com/ or reach me at anil(a)dashes.com or 646 833-8659. --- Romy Ilano romy(a)snowyla.com

12 years, 2 months

Can anyone come by to open the common room in the morning?

by Eddie Che

Thanks, just need to pick up some materials for the hop over to SF (and, Redwood City for the legal case.) Che. you could, volunteer a number mine's 440-935-5434 and, the time will be between 8 and 9:30 so, please can someone give me the hookup?

12 years, 2 months

Fwd: [P2P-F] Fwd: Google Mine: Service To "Help" You Share Your Gadgets, Clothes And Other Stuff With Friends

by Marina Kukso

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Date: Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 9:15 AM Subject: [P2P-F] Fwd: Google Mine: Service To "Help" You Share Your Gadgets, Clothes And Other Stuff With Friends To: p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation(a)lists.ourproject.org> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> Date: Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 10:17 PM Subject: Fwd: Google Mine: Service To "Help" You Share Your Gadgets, Clothes And Other Stuff With Friends To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> via Seth ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: S Date: Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 7:54 AM Subject: Google Mine: Service To "Help" You Share Your Gadgets, Clothes And Other Stuff With Friends http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/21/google-is-reportedly-working-on-a-service-… Google is apparently working on an app called Google Mine that is meant to help you share real-world items, such as CDs, cars, bikes, gadgets or clothes, with your friends. The service, which is apparently closely integrated with Google+, is said to be in private beta testing within Google right now. According to Chitu, the service also allows you to catalog your belongings, review them (which could be cool for purchases) and send requests to borrow stuff from friends. There also seems to be something akin to a wish list and a feature that will allow you to share a list of items you don’t want to share but just want to give away. All of this sharing, of course, happens on Google+. [image: google_mine]<http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/google_mine.png> The service, the report says, is available on the web and through an Android app. The app also supposedly includes a 3D viewer that’ll show you your objects, though it’s not clear how you would get these models into the app. Google is obviously not the only company interested in this kind of real-world tracking. Mine <http://getmine.com/>, a startup that launched last December<http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/10/blippy-redux-mine-launches-a-service-for-s…> and that probably doesn’t have the exact same name by coincidence, is also working on giving its users the ability to track the things they own, but with a focus on what they’ve bought online. This service, though, seems to be more focused on e-commerce than on the sharing economy. -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/ _______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

12 years, 2 months

Making More Accessible...

by Eddie Che

Hello! Two ideas came up during a sit outside with all my stuff. Let's keep accessibility as a priority! How do you guys feel about: a) Can we intentionally unlock the front door of the common room where the cosmic stairs are? eg, first one in each day, unlocks it? I noticed that the Fresh tomatoes group likes to leave the bottom Broadway-side door open, which seems to be cool with George. b) Who was it that was super-nearby? Perhaps, could this person put on paper+tape on the side door: "If locked, can call : _______" & he can use the door IP? (at reasonable hours) rawk on. and, my generator's almost complete now! of good note also, the main desktop is working again and the power cord for the extra laptop came back for those who don't have their own laptops :) sudo is an excellent example, let's just figure out these other access things! rap back, che

12 years, 2 months

Who wants to help me put this scanning antenna on the roof of sudoroom?

by Gregg Horton

12 years, 2 months

los angeles hackerspaces - telic arts exchanges / public school los angeles

by Romy Ilano

if any of you are in los angeles... i saw my cool feminist asian american studies firend mimi nguyen speak at telic arts exchange a few years ago. http://www.telic.info/ I was recommending the place to one of my friends, and I saw that they run the public school los angeles http://www.telic.info/the-public-school their blog posts are really hilarious... kind of funnier than ours, which are so serious. >> http://www.telic.info/node/40 what the hell is going on here? i guess it's a witty thing on derivatives, but so funny! This makes me consider visiting los angeles again, they are like the machine room. so funny! all those frustrated film industry people.

12 years, 2 months

foxconn stepping it up with the mozilla OS

by Romy Ilano

this is pretty neat... http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/24/foxconn-3000-software-workers/ Foxconn wants to step up its Firefox OS development with thousands of new engineers [image: Foxconn wants to step up its Firefox OS development with thousands of new engineers] Image by Imaginechina/Corbis June 24, 2013 7:34 AM Ricardo Bilton <http://venturebeat.com/author/rbilton/> Add a Comment<http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/24/foxconn-3000-software-workers/#disqus_thr…> inShare <http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/24/foxconn-3000-software-workers/> [image: MobileBeat 2013] <http://mobilebeat2013.com> *July 9-10, 2013* San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now<http://mobilebeat2013-MB2013boilerplateTOP.eventbrite.com/> When Foxconn announced its support for Firefox OS<http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/03/foxconn-joins-firefox-os/>, it wasn’t kidding around. The manufacturing giant said this weekend that hopes to recruit 3,000 software engineers<http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2013/06/21/2003565268> to help it develop for Mozilla’s mobile operating system in its software center in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. To put that number in context, the Kaohsiung center currently houses 300 workers, making the addition of 3,000 new employees a pretty massive investment. (The company had initially expected to hire from 500 and 1,000 workers.) As Foxconn said in a statement: “There will be no budget limit for fostering software talent.” The move is an important one for Foxconn, which is moving away from simply making devices for big foreign companies like Apple. instead, the company is pursuing what it calls a “‘eight screens, one network, and one cloud’ strategy,” which essentially means that wants to have a greater role in both the hardware and software design of the devices made in its factories. To put it simply: The Foxconn of the future will be a very different beast from the one we’re used to.

12 years, 2 months

This Friday 6-7pm DIY Bio - Counter Culture Labs General meeting at Sudo Room

by Ryan Bethencourt

Hi All Sudo and CCL Hackers/Biohackers, Just a quick announcement that Counter Culture labs will be having our general meeting this *Friday (last friday of the month as per usual) at Sudo Room in Oakland from 6-7pm (just booked in the Calendar). * All biotech enthusiasts are welcome to join and discuss the exciting new developments with CCL (we're getting ready to move forward on a new biotech community lab space, with a financial projection/total member discussion this friday), some of the recent discussions (and advice) we've had from Genspace+Hacker Dojo and most importantly, a discussion on some of the VERY cool projects that our members are working on or will be starting up once our new space opens! *Some cool stats on Counter Culture labs:* - Since forming with our first official meeting at Sudo room approximately 6 months ago, Counter culture labs membership has *grown to 76 members* - Counter Culture labs now has weekly working meetings, which Patrik had the foresight to lead the development of and Ahnon has successfully hosted at her home for many weeks to build CCL's infrastructure - VERY strong social media presence - Ahnon and Mary have led CCL's social media strategy with incredible zest and Patrik launched our meet up group which has grown extremely rapidly! - Great website coming soon - Naomi volunteered to lead the development of our website and any offers of help are welcome! - CCL has attracted an incredible amount of Scientists, MD's, Business People, Tech and Biotech enthusiasts and could possibly be the largest pool of scientists and MD's of any biohacker space that we're aware of thus far. This bodes very well for the future of the innovative projects and classes that will be developed at CCL and hopefully we'll all be able to take part as a positive force for change in our local communities and on a larger scale through biotech and science innovation! *Staying in touch with Counter culture labs: * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/east-bay-diybio https://twitter.com/CountrCultrLabs https://www.facebook.com/CounterCultureLabs “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." - Alan Watts Bye from Miami for now! Ryan -- Ryan Bethencourt Tel: (415) 825 2705 ryan.bethencourt(a)gmail.com www.bamh1.com www.linkedin.com/in/bethencourt www.logos-press.com/books/biotechnology_business_development.php

12 years, 2 months

many thanks to workshop weekend!

by Marina Kukso

thanks again to gil and JD from workshop weekend for organizing two days of truly excellent workshops and leaving the table in sudo room cleaner than it was before you got there :) best, marina

12 years, 2 months

missing facilitator names for upcoming "today i learned" sessions

by Marina Kukso

hi all, on a related note to the june 29th mystery facilitator issue, we have a number of upcoming sessions that don't have a facilitator listed: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Today_I_Learned when creating new today i learned workshops, please ensure that you include your name and contact info (can be whatever form you choose - doesn't have to be email) so that we can get in touch with you about promoting the session, any scheduling issues, etc. if you are the person (or know the person) who is doing the following sessions, please add your name or contact me: June 29: How to showcase your 3D printed work with a time-lapse video July 27: Attacking And Securing Your Wireless Network August 17: Hacking Blackjack - marina

12 years, 2 months

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

sudo-discuss