cesperanza:
Well, I don’t think we’re at the end days yet, but we’re definitely in the “it would be worth investigating what a next good move would look like” phase of things.
I tell you, I have had the advantage of my life of being the technically stupidest person in a lot of rooms, and so I totally understand the feelings of helplessness and terror. But this helps me a lot in teaching because I don’t automatically assume that the person I’m talking to understands what I mean at all!
The tl;dr is that I am learning that there are a lot of new tools that can be deployed to connect networks of people just like ours – what lim was saying in her post is that our network, fandom, is itself a huge resource that we have, because networks themselves have power in distributed systems! However the question of which tools and in what order to deploy them and how to use them and to what result has to be evaluated, but you know–don’t worry, we can do this! I reblogged lim’s post because she’s like, 100 miles ahead of me on this stuff and there are other people who 100 miles ahead of me too, out on the frontiers, but I wanted to say that I will always straggle behind and try to figure out where we’re going and leave signs and wave my arms around a lot. xo
our network, fandom, is itself a huge resource that we have, because networks themselves have power in distributed systems!
Right! This is exactly it. I have a foot in both worlds b/c of RL (meshnet stuff) and it’s honestly whiplash to go from distributed computing and decentralised web stuff where they are wading through tools and software and approaches and ideas but don’t have the networks (the largest p2p search engine has like, 600 peer operators, approximately the size of an abandoned tumblr about the sock choices of Bucky Barnes) and fandom where the #1 concern is how to cope with the avalanche of content and people and sheer BYTES and ACTIVITY we produce. It’s like, fandom is constantly making these posts going ‘but what are we going to do with all this GOLD? We just can’t DEAL with this amount of GOLD. THIS GOLD IS A GODDAMN ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD.’
The problem of handling data (for art and vids) is only a problem if you have to host it all in a central location. In decentralised systems, the more people you have in your network, and the more densely interconnected they are, the more powerful and faster it becomes. The more you are making content people really value, without the distortions of an algorithm based on selling attention (bad attention is more profitable than good attention) to adbots, the stronger your network. The stronger your community, the better your Trust Model and the more reliable your connections. Communities that can afford social standing to good citizens, that have some way of uplifting those citizens, can shape the norms they want in their community in positive ways. Fandom can do all this. Fandom is naturally strong is exactly these ways and is being injured in precisely these areas by the profit model.
Fandom has its problems, for sure, and the new places we migrate to and the new platforms will have new problems – unavoidable. But… we have all this gold, and IMO if we stay in this space it will slip through our fingers.
I’ve slung up a dat://limvids.net on a homebase set up now (I will put up a step by step) and turned on and I will leave it on. This is probably not the exact right answer. This is just one step on the journey. But let’s throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
* “Fandom is constantly making these posts going ‘but what are we going to do with all this GOLD? We just can’t DEAL with this amount of GOLD. THIS GOLD IS A GODDAMN ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD.’”
L.J.'s Obsessions 