As precursor to my blog post announcement later today, here's my #SocialHub response to the topic on how to treat the #LinkedData based #ActivityPub open standard where messages can be expressed both as plain #JSON as well as in #JSONLD, leading to the most costly misconception that has dragged the #fediverse sideways from its original promise and power..
Fediverse-we-have is at a major inflection point And so I did, and seeing all the discussion here for which I thank you all, I decided to put in way more effort than originally intended, and delving into much deeper subject matter.
Either revival and course correction to the original #ActivityPub protocol power and promise. With the potential to #ReimagineSocial.
Or keep current track with fedi-we-have. Be content with a few great and reasonably popular app platforms. Surely some more to come. But with a messy wire protocol that stifles #innovation and isn't future-proof.
This special thought provoker is based on personal reflection and 8 years of #commoning. Deliberately exposed to the inherent unsustainability of the #FOSS movement. Burning privilege by spending my savings.
Goal: 1st-hand experience to learn the #social dynamics that make a #commons tick.
Social dynamics in the grassroots fediverse ecosystem and laisséz-faire practices led to divergence from power and promise of the ActivityPub protocol. Grassroots standards and the ActivityPub API initiative can get us back on track.
Can you influence and steer emergence and evolution? Some people like me, with Social experience design think so. Another person is Richard D. Bartlett known from #Loomio who also is behind #Microsolidarity, which I was reminded of the other day. Have a look for yourself..
@laurenshof wrote fabulous reports analysing our #SocialWeb and sadly this included raging techno-ideological #ProtocolWars too. How can we turn that to #Progress?
So much friction and heat in the raging discussions #ActivityPub vs. #ATProto 😭
🔮 What is *much* more relevant in #Bluesky vs AP is WHY ❔ Bluesky + ATProto gets the bigger uptake, despite compromising on #moral and #ethical values and #principles we hold dear.
Knowing the answers to that is where #opportunity for strategic action comes from. And subsequently following what you may call #FocusedPragmatism instead of just 'wild-coding' the chaotic #fedi with countless independent, uncoordinated "Show, don't tells" of yet more code to shove onto the #BigBallOfMud that fediverse-we-have increasingly represents.
And then to continue onwards and think how the relationship is between #FOSS individuals who give their all-in best-efforts for world improvement, make real sacrifices, and who gift their 2 cts with best-intentions, still are faced with uncomfortable questions.
To turn that into solution-orientation we must find a good recipe, and note down #recipe ingredients..
🌱 Recipe for Sustainable open social systems i.e. #SOSS
The fun of #SX is that you don't have to learn it, nor do you have to get it taught to you.
Like chess you should #experience it to gain #experience, and you do that by meeting other #people and #practice it. By #SocialExperience with your friends and peers in the chess world #SocialGraph. Weaving #SocialFabric where you can be playful, creative and do experiments, engage in #challenges. This keeps one intrinsically #motivated to stay into the #game. Learn more. Enter a virtuous ⭕ circle of rewarding #exercises.
And perhaps one day. Suddenly and unexpected, #opportunity finds you to play against #MagnusCarlsen. And WIN!
The important thing is: You need not have any *expectation* for that. And most people shouldn't, as it is boils down to 'hanging yourself up to a Vision' if you simply don't possess the 'chess genius gene'. Most people don't.
However you can still #Dream about beating Magnus one day to have fun at every level of your progression path to mastery.
Emergence. So fascinating, that. I came to some deep insight re: commons organization, a concept I call the Paradox of (commons based) Emergence. Hope to post a forum topic on it soon.
I told so often on the channels that I shouldn't explain so much about SX concepts. That it was a failure condition. And it is. It was also my method to reiterate to myself for testing and improving them against various statements. And to jog my bad memory.
#SX #ThoughtExperiment. #Emergence needs 2 ingredients: Simple building blocks and a set of rules. What if you were the first person to invent chess? For chess you can write them down in a heartbeat. Then though, this first designer / inventor of the game, who thinks it through..
Can they imagine at that time Magnus Carlson level complexity?
There exist no other chess players yet. Can they train with others? Will they understand the excitement of a deep philosophical session where the inventor got an inkling of Magnus Carlsen level genius? Probably not.
Today there are libraries full of chess books. But not then. Should the inventor write all that? He can't. The only way to 'spread' chess about, is for others to experience it with others: social experience. Learn by doing.
My mistake was that I was encouraging people into *doing*, but my continuous explanation seemed to ask "join me on something very complex and vague". That complex and vague being the reverse engineering of complex social dynamics that exist in the #commons, back to simple building blocks and rules. What an emergent designer does. But not at all what you need to know to participate in SX solutions. Everyone does their own thing.
The paradox: Concrete SX practice steers intangible emergent value creation, but what you see at a time is just your 2 cents.
However, all the potential power remains dormant, ethereal and invisible, especially to people other than the designer. It can only be properly perceived and valued, either with deep attention and focus on the emergent dynamics of the design. Or by dilligent practice in the field.
A design may represent a beautiful emergent Golden Dragon of Problem Solving. Waiting in its lair under Wicked Problem mountain for when its time to breathe its Fires of Solution onto mankind. Ready to soar. Yet what most other people and even at times the designer themself perceive is merely a tiny mouse. Thus they are unwilling to add their 2 cents to a Potential they cannot grasp. Unable to see how their support adds to a sizable Dragon's Hoard that has already emerged, lending power to the dragon so it may be unleashed.
The Paradox Of Emergence is the inability to explain to pragmatic people who say "Show me the money" in terms of what your solution is capable of. A good emergent design that models with emergent forces as building blocks to which it specifies simple rules, may have prepared a Golden Dragon that is ready and waiting to be unleashed. Yet it exists entirely in emergent space, it is pure potential all the way. The Dragon is lurking unseen to anyone but the designers themself, making the solution a tough sell, where investments in time and money are asked for. OTOH once the Dragon has been unleashed, then its true value becomes readily apparent to anyone. Another example is chess. Can the first inventor of the game, convey Magnus Carlson level concepts to demonstrate the power & potential of this new game, where other people only see some simple building blocks and rule set?
In follow-up to "Grassroots fediverse evolution", which tells the tale of my 8 year social experience in the commons of #FOSS and #ActivityPub fedi, I am preparing another article, called "Paradox of emergent chaordic commons", which is a factor to take into account for ensuring Sustainable ecosystem evolution (SEE).
See the article's #poll and consider joining the brainstorm for yourself in my call-to-reflection on fedi's future: social.coop/@smallcircles/1163…
The pillars of the #fediverse, which I honor in my article, @evan and @silverpill are doing fabulous work. But it is also work that more people should do, the chores should be more fairly delegated and balanced between all commons participants.
#CommonsJanitoring. There's a saying that starts with "If we all did our part" which in #SX forms a key tenet. Proactive ecosystem participation should be duly rewarded for the commons to become more sustainable.
Sustainable ecosystem evolution (SEE) ℹ Note: The diagram depicst SEE simplified. The full SEE model evolves commons-first. Click to expand the Alt-text to the diagram.
Either revival and course correction to the original #ActivityPub protocol power and promise. With the potential to #ReimagineSocial.
Or keep current track with fedi-we-have. Be content with a few great and reasonably popular app platforms. Surely some more to come. But with a messy wire protocol that stifles #innovation and isn't future-proof.
This special thought provoker is based on personal reflection and 8 years of #commoning. Deliberately exposed to the inherent unsustainability of the #FOSS movement. Burning privilege by spending my savings.
Goal: 1st-hand experience to learn the #social dynamics that make a #commons tick.
Social dynamics in the grassroots fediverse ecosystem and laisséz-faire practices led to divergence from power and promise of the ActivityPub protocol. Grassroots standards and the ActivityPub API initiative can get us back on track.
I want to read it, and it's on a topic of importance to me, but I recognize that I don't have the focus or time.
Also, I'm quickly running into information for which I lack referents, making it difficult to digest what the article is saying.
I think what I'd need (for whatever that may be worth) in order to be able to digest this properly is some backgrounders on the major pieces mentioned:
what is "solid project"?
how does the "two people / pillars" situation correlate to the current state of Mastodon, specifically the Mastodon Foundation?
exactly how has fedi strayed from [standards, early promise...]?
I'd probably have more to ask/say but I keep getting interrupted, which perhaps gives you some idea of why I'm not able to read the article properly right now...
@woozle the article was described as "fairly long thinkpiece" by @Profpatsch which with 53 min. read time is an understatement of "fairly long" where it comes to typical online content.
Thank you for taking the time and ponder things! I think that is the most important. We are all so pragmatic and want to have quick results. And our society is asking to be hurried. Everything is urgent. All is in peril. But giving in to that urge is a trap, that makes us weaker as mankind to face our wickedest problems.
Besides "Hammock driven development" mentioned in the article, #Emergence is key. And emergence is WEIRD and fascinating. I just tooted about it in..
I used #SolidProject just to contrast a totally opposite approach to how fedi evolves: Fully formal #OpenStandards driven, but with risk to evolve into a 'standards maze' without ecosystem support.
#Mastodon Foundation is a new development. Hopefully they care beyond the app.
Can you influence and steer emergence and evolution? Some people like me, with Social experience design think so. Another person is Richard D. Bartlett known from #Loomio who also is behind #Microsolidarity, which I was reminded of the other day. Have a look for yourself..
Thank you! I am delighted to hear that. An *intent* in itself is already valuable. And even more so, being *intentional* in what you do. Both of these have emergent properties. So you are *already* practicing #SX by sending this toot, it constitutes your 2 cents. And hence, truly, you may call yourself Social experience designer, if that were your dream job like it is mine. 😊
This is how weird and wonderful emergence is. At least that is my *expectation*. I am also merely practicing, ha ha :)
@woozle @Profpatsch @eryn "I have been working on a "move slowly and build things" basis for some time now..."
This is absolutely fine. Anybody who thinks a new order of independents is going to emerge in five years is delusional: first, we can all only do so much in a given time, and second we have to wait for each other to come up with successive evolutionary steps.
💯 Totally! This is even part of core principles of #SX: Mindfulness.
A movement is timeless and can only progress by participants adding their 2 cts, which accrue over time. Or it pauses, waiting for input. The wicked solution is timeless in a similar way, waiting its lifecycle stage where it solves the wicked problem and sustainably satisfies all stakeholders' evolving needs.
Urgency is provided by individuals. However, if some group or movement has the attitude "Stop the talking, we MUST act NOW and with URGENCY" they have a humongous failure condition right there.
Instead there is prioritised, planned urgency and after breakdown into manageable chunks. It becomes simple then. You talk when you need to talk, and you act when you need to act.
It sounds like a platitude, and perhaps it is in how obvious it is. But if you don't act according to the wisdom of the platitude, perhaps it bears repeating it? Platitudes are a form of universal truths.
Aha, good one, I love it! Since I'm still in nerdsniped state on this whole emergence thing, let me try to come up with yet another platitude then... umm 🤔 ......
Aww, got it. Maybe its garbage, platitudal overload, but at least it sounds deep. 🤣
I'm pondering now if I should make "SX platitude" a SX artifact. I likely will.
You see, there's a concept of "wisdom tiles" in SX, indicating universal truths that all (or most) people agree on, like "think, before you act". The tile I generated represents a Delft-blue "wisdom tile" and these things used to hang in the toilet in our grandparents house when we were young. You typically gifted them on birthdays of your Grandma. They are now kinda disappearing. It is old-fashioned.
The underlying innercircles simple life philosophy that underpins SX goes from the assumption that "simple solutions still exist". And that in terms of wisdom, knowledge, common sense, and life experience *everything* we need to solve the wicked solutions of our time, is already out there. It is the coordinated application in practice during prolonged times where we drop the ball.
Wisdom is relative, in the eye of the beholder. "Wisdom tile" best avoided.
@Profpatsch @woozle @eryn It is not. It is giving people time to innovate, and to make their ideas tangible. Growth can be organic, unmanaged. Give it time to nurture, it will be strong. (The platitude is a bit naff, to be honest).
I'd say it's also good to have a plan; outside of capitalism, it's easier for plans to include things like "spending time following up creative impulses until you feel like you're done".
When people are working together, some of them might even want to be available to help others with their impulsive projects -- and from that, new plans, new branches, or new solutions can emerge.
Both, based on need I'd say. In SX its mindfulness principle again, and I can expand the sentence above with "plan, when you need to plan".
Plans are certainly needed at different granularity and scope, for different purpose, and likely having relationships to each other too.
Mindfulness is one thing, but Sustainability core principle is about finding the right balance of when to do what and when. You must plan to anticipate your Risks timely, for instance.
Finally there's Playfulness core principle, which is the most powerful, but also only truly comes into play (pun intended) when the other core principles are addressed to a minimal extent.
Here is the freedom to be creative, to experiment, to be flexible and versatile, to work at your own leisure, to just have fun, etc. This all relates to the Joyful creation SX formula, and the stimulation of intrinsic motivation to participate in the commons, find places where you fit, and foster cohesion.
@woozle Length of time to read something “from start to finish” should not be the only “value measure” of an expressed written article as I typically don’t read an article only once to fully comprehend(build a personal mental model). Otherwise I will skim and speedread to create a “mental gist” summary.
I’ve read “once through” all of the article with Saturday morning coffee, otherwise I would have read what I could within an allocated timebox to make previous time commitments.
Well said. Esp. when things are HARD, like the wicked problems that ail our world, #ClimateChange for instance. Everyone should contribute their fair share, right? Give just their 2 cents?
Wicked problems require wicked solutions. Numerous tiny #solution increments made all over the place by different people. It requires 'thinking at scale' for prolonged times, and 'doing' on the basis of that. In terms of planning for that 'Bigger Ideas' need time to mature and ripen, and this too involves many people. And is emergent and evolutionary in nature too! This great animation on "Where good ideas come from" calls this the 'Slow Hunch"..
There's another great vid by Rich HIckey, creator of #Clojure, besides "Hammock Driven Development" mentioned in the article, titled "Simple made Easy" given at a #StrangeLoop conference..
Disfruta de los vídeos y la música que te gustan, sube material original y comparte el contenido con tus amigos, tu familia y el resto del mundo en YouTube.
That's a really strong article, solid all the way through. I'm glad you acknowledge the small web as a plausible alternative to the fediverse.
I'm strongly of the opinion myself that whenever humanity tries to design something it never ends well, but that organic creation is the only way forward (compare new towns to very old ones which have character and community), and also that protocols really need to be as simple as possible.
I love the lead image, realise I need to set aside some time to read the article - look forward to doing so.
The graphic reminds me a bit of where the web was at the end of Web 1 / eve of Web 2.0… the W3C was pushing XHTML and tighter standards compliance / semantic precision – the web itself was chaotic and messy – and then the WHATWG formed from Apple/Mozilla/Opera in parallel to instead push for HTML5 with a bunch of nice UI things like CSS gradients, rounded corners, Webfonts, and native video and audio tags/players… and Web 2.0 exploded with pretty UIs but without the semantic quality or even agreeing a single metadata standard between Microdata/Microformats/RDF…
There are these opportunities again. To shape a new and better web, get rid of 2.0, the cloud hegemony and browser oligopoly even. Various paradigm shifts like #p2p, #localfirst, #wasm, #HyperMediaWeb, etc. are to our disposal, and new opportunities arise, esp. where it comes to social networking.
if the lesson from that period is that ultimately it was the browser companies not the W3C that shaped what happened next - as they get to decide the priorities for their browser engines - I wonder what the alternatives are this time or if it is all in the hands of the biggest apps and services?
I've finally read it, and given how many new concepts, I have only a thinnish grasp of the detail, but the core is very clear and as a 'problem with flat governance' could apply to many other spheres…
Two immediate responses, apologies if long discussed by other means:
- if the challenge of knowing what Fediverse Apps implement which bit of the spec is a blocker, is there a standard way to declare which bits of the spec an app is conformant in? Json / yaml / xml / etc list of specific Activity Pub spec capabilities implemented or diverged from? Presumably once agreed these could be created by anyone and PRd to existing apps (or is that what federation.md is?)
- does the Fediverse need a democratic membership org that funds core maintenance of FEP and pays for some of the core community maintainers to keep looking after the ecosystem / garden (and putting in the time to keep having discussions with different actors). Obvs that's no small ask; my Q: is it the right ask?
> if the challenge of knowing what Fediverse Apps implement which bit of the spec is a blocker, is there a standard way to declare which bits of the spec an app is conformant in?
The #ActivityPub #FEP process keeps a list of implementations, in each of its documents. The FEDERATION.md was once introduced as "something to start with before going more complex wrt introspection", a temporary bandaid to bring improvement. Its adoption and use, and later its description as a recommended practice are going very slow though. Still, a very useful practice, compared to lacking such doc and perusing foreign codebases for the info.
> does the Fediverse need a democratic membership org that funds core maintenance of FEP and pays for some of the core community maintainers to keep looking after the ecosystem.
That might be a good solution. For part of a much bigger problem. No #funding bakes bread yet.
I addressed this with @nlnet in the past, and intend to bring it up again next week.
It is the right ask though. The ask is: What are ALL the moving gears that make sustainable #FOSS (i.e. #SOSS) be produced, and in an entire healthy technology ecosystem at that.
My investigation around commons based social dynamics started when I had basically given up "trying to herd cats" at #SocialHub where it was already clear that most people didn't much beyond the interest for their own #ActivityPub project, to mingle in the discussions. I mentioned at the time in various thread "Do you want 'community-of-action' or just a mere discussion forum. But even for those questions there's hardly anyone interested.
I knew all this already from my time facilitating Humane Tech Community - now dormant, waiting for value at community.humanetech.com - but needed to more deeply understand.
The notion of #FSDL in its double meaning of #FreeSoftware development lifecycle, and #Fediverse solution delivery lifecycle rose from there, but also the need for a new adoption model.
This will be named SX FractalHEARTS, an #innovation strategy and technology adoption model (TAM) fit for chaotic grassroots ecosystems (and turn them more chaordic over time).
💞 HEARTS here, like the FSDL, has a double meaning to the acronym too, depending on the Pyramid of Perspective layer that is focused on.
It stands either for Hedonics-based Early Adoption of Research and Technologies at the individual initiative scale of the pyramid (bottom layer)
And then for Hedonic Ecosystems for Adoption of Responsible Technologies at the higher layers, where we want to deal with the externalities that the introduction of the tech has when it lands in society, as best we can.
Best-known is the TAM of regular Bizz, which LinkedIn is full of. I got inspired in 2022 by some alternative also weirdly-acronymed TAM's, see: discuss.coding.social/t/challe…
'Fractal' stands for the pragmatic approach SX takes to organic growth at natural speed and rate of evolution, and its feedback loops.
You help with #UI design of #CivicCRM! An example I see often..
A #community-driven #FOSS project where participants, mostly coders, sigh "Oh, if only a #UX designer started contributing, how much better could we reach the broader public". Things like that. And also for various other FSDL-related stakeholder roles you often see this whistful thinking.
So why not actively *attract* people with the skills you need?
The answer often given is that "They are not interested" or something like that. But this is not true. They don't know HOW to contribute, for instance. The workflow of issue-driven feature design-by-concensus that occurs in the issue tracker of a code forge doesn't map well onto workflows a typical designer needs, and vice versa.
@nlnet there's a blog-post or talk about that – getting involved took years! I was a user for 9 years before I went on a sprint and started to contribute to the UI – initially just with the CSS for some else's extension for a mobile-responsive menu that got merged to core a year later…
It was another five years after that after using lockdown to create a cross-CMS theme for Civi (Finsbury Park)– that I eventually started on a Core-backed UI project in 2022, which we released in 2026. And even now, expertise still feels measured around tangible things like coding skills, over intangible things, such as intuiting UX/design/usability coz "anyone can do that". And that makes sense - you can review code, I can review CSS - but how can folk review 'subjective' UX patterns that are targetted at end-users who are mostly very different to a high-level super-performant, tech-savvy maintainer? I've seen two senior designers try to join in and leave; I just stuck around for years!
I nearly missed your reply in all the discussion my blog triggered. I know exactly what you mean. In my early years at RSDB, largest Print company in Europe then, there was huge focus on interaction design, which was later lost. UX is in theory broad, human-centric, in practice app/product focused.
Last big tech company I worked for as employee, scaled agile etc, had UX folks be part of each team, which helps.
The likely disruptive launch of Claude Design contains lotta talk on the age-old dev vs. designer divide. @diacritica founder of @penpot came on Social coding forum in the early days, and mentioned that a lifelong dream was to bridge this gap once and for all.
It's a pity that the focus on funding, and entrenched ideological clash that followed, chased away Pablo as this was fabulous opportunity to brainstorm more on this.
SX's social activity tracks (SAT's) may be a good instrument.
As a Free Software developer, I need Free Software development tools that are developed in a sustainable way by people and organizations whose primary goal is to further the interest of the general public.
Note that the discussion on VC funding is very relevant too, and in terms of my own stance and opinion that has formed over time, I do agree with the other people in that thread that once you accept VC funding, you have bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant.
What I rue is how principled and valued FOSS movement participants, which I'm part of myself, are often so ideologically engrained on dogmatic standpoints that nuanced discussion becomes impossible. There's no path towards solution-orientation and the kind of sustainable, evolving commons that's able to say: We have the better alternative. Demonstrated by actual benefits and real rewards.
That'd really encourage people to join healthy ecosystem formation, as they become naturally attracted, intrinsically motivated to get the most out of their participation.
Instead I see most activism completely backfire, fizzle out, become ineffective.
I posted a Question topic “Ensuring best outcomes from AI disruption” to the Gleam community. I shall copy the text below … As an activist with a strategic mindset I note how so much activism that is out there is very haphazard, inefficient, and m…
"once you accept VC funding, you have bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant."
Yes+no. I like Pablo's framing of looking at the overall value created by a FOSS project. VC-FOSS Mattermost and VC-FOSS Gitlab are both useful to CiviCRM… even as both slowly enshitify with the 'community editions' dropping more and more features… Moving to Codeberg/etc would/will be a significant undertaking using missing time/resources…
I desperately want Penpot to succeed, I keep trying it at the start of projects then running out of exploration time so go back to Figma – a tool not just VC-funded and AI-pushing but closed source! The UX polish and usability work to remove that friction takes so much time – so I don't judge Penpot any more than Firefox building their biz model on top of Google Search… the key thing seems more the quality of core team & their decisions under the protections of the GPL (or MPL in Penpot's case which I know less about).
I don't really blame these companies for their choices either, and besides that, there are fields in tech that can't do without VC funding. Think of the hard tech sector, when an invention has to be developed into industrial mass production.
In software land there are some very large projects that also require major funding, and if that is not to be found by other means, then perhaps VC can be considered. A competitive open web browser comes to mind. @penpot too has a major task against Figma, and Gitlab against Github (they position differently, more on the b2b enterprise software dev niche than GH).
By "bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant" under SX, I mean to say: follow the system we are all living in. Bowing is the norm.
To NOT bow under Hypercapitalism requires thinking out of the box and coming up with innovative new collaboration methods, that allow us to circumvent Conway's Law, that causes hypercapitalist practices to creep in.
For this last example you can take a look at @linuxfoundation which has adopted a very professional formal organization structure, that is aligned to that of the business and government world.
It gets scolded for that by principled FOSS afficionados, but in order to reach the scale and size, and particular global positive societal impact, and be sustainable in the long term, the chaordic commons of FOSS and Social impact movements have little to offer right now, and seeking business best-practices that have proven to work in modern society is only logical.
> "bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant" under SX, I mean to say: follow the system we are all living in. Bowing is the norm."
Yeh the conversation could almost be 'what flavour is your compromise' or 'how do you dance that dance?' – because all of us are making them… And then within that question, are others: 'which part of the compromises are red lines?' or 'are the compromises shrinking or growing?'…
e.g. I badly want to leave Spotify, I keep buying CDs and tracks from Bandcamp but leaving to an alternative stack I need to research, test and migrate to requires time I don't have. Same with only buying ethical cola.
To live ethically in a brutal and regularly harmful system feels like daily practice and renewal; at best more of a dance. The biggest dangers seems at one end apathy and not caring; and at the other self-righteously believing having done a, b or c, one is now beyond fault and able to judge others.
💯 percent, totally. We strive to be the best person we can, knowing we all have flaws, and necessarily have to make compromises. The person who doesn't isn't on the fediverse, where a lot of demands are placed on participants regarding how they should fit in. This is the fascinating part, the figuring out how to still form cohesive, safe, inclusive, and harmonious online spaces, and safeguard a good balance of norms and values such that it becomes socio-culturally engrained in people.
At largest scale, and in top level of the Pyramid of Perspective, SX deals with the dream / vision of "Harmonious society", where we necessarily also need to live next to the person that isn't wholly aligned with our own beliefs and ideologies, same as we do in the offline world. There need to be clear rules what is and isn't proper behavior, but within that space a certain level of tolerance and nuance is a requirement, which in turn stimulates trust.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •As precursor to my blog post announcement later today, here's my #SocialHub response to the topic on how to treat the #LinkedData based #ActivityPub open standard where messages can be expressed both as plain #JSON as well as in #JSONLD, leading to the most costly misconception that has dragged the #fediverse sideways from its original promise and power..
socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/…
Practices around JSON formatting of JSON-LD messages
SocialHub🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker 🤔
#fediverse is at an inflection point.
Either revival and course correction to the original #ActivityPub protocol power and promise. With the potential to #ReimagineSocial.
Or keep current track with fedi-we-have. Be content with a few great and reasonably popular app platforms. Surely some more to come. But with a messy wire protocol that stifles #innovation and isn't future-proof.
#AskFedi do you dare to dream?
This special thought provoker is based on personal reflection and 8 years of #commoning. Deliberately exposed to the inherent unsustainability of the #FOSS movement. Burning privilege by spending my savings.
Goal: 1st-hand experience to learn the #social dynamics that make a #commons tick.
I invite you to a #brainstorm & #ideation ride. To ponder how #fedi can organically evolve. Become unbeatable by #hypercapitalism.
coding.social/blog/grassroots-…
But in an age of #AI who still reads long handcrafted #blogs? Fill in the #poll.
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb
Grassroots fediverse evolution
Social coding commons- In the end I more or less read the whole article (63%, 36 votes)
- I read the article summary, skimmed for highlights (17%, 10 votes)
- I passed the problem section, read the tech ideas (3%, 2 votes)
- Meh, skip. Too technical. Too social fluffy. Other (15%, 9 votes)
57 voters. Poll end: 4 days ago🫧 socialcoding.. reshared this.
Bechele
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Bechele • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker
Back to promise and power of AP?
Sustainable #evolution, hmm, yes.
#Emergence, you say? Right, umm.. 🤷
#Fediverse-we-have vs. #ActivityPub, which is more powerful and #versatile ?
Lego Sets vs. Lego Blocks, which is more powerful and versatile?
View the video mentioned in the article about Emergent Complexity..
youtube.com/watch?v=0HqUYpGQIf…
Can you influence and steer emergence and evolution? Some people like me, with Social experience design think so. Another person is Richard D. Bartlett known from #Loomio who also is behind #Microsolidarity, which I was reminded of the other day. Have a look for yourself..
microsolidarity.cc
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb
Microsolidarity
www.microsolidarity.cc🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker
@laurenshof wrote fabulous reports analysing our #SocialWeb and sadly this included raging techno-ideological #ProtocolWars too. How can we turn that to #Progress?
So much friction and heat in the raging discussions #ActivityPub vs. #ATProto 😭
🔮 What is *much* more relevant in #Bluesky vs AP is WHY ❔ Bluesky + ATProto gets the bigger uptake, despite compromising on #moral and #ethical values and #principles we hold dear.
Knowing the answers to that is where #opportunity for strategic action comes from. And subsequently following what you may call #FocusedPragmatism instead of just 'wild-coding' the chaotic #fedi with countless independent, uncoordinated "Show, don't tells" of yet more code to shove onto the #BigBallOfMud that fediverse-we-have increasingly represents.
#ActivityPubAPI provides such Opportunity.
To revive on a *greenfield basis* doing #Protocol design and adopt lessons-learned from APv1 #Microbloggosphere vs. #Atmosphere.
#SX
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker 🤔
For those who chimed in to join the #brainstorming and want to be nerdsniped potentially you may ponder that..
♟️ #Chess is a great example of an #EmergentSystem.
🌱 Recipe for #Emergence of chess #game
- [chess ingredients here]
And then to continue onwards and think how the relationship is between #FOSS individuals who give their all-in best-efforts for world improvement, make real sacrifices, and who gift their 2 cts with best-intentions, still are faced with uncomfortable questions.
To turn that into solution-orientation we must find a good recipe, and note down #recipe ingredients..
🌱 Recipe for Sustainable open social systems i.e. #SOSS
- [sustainable FOSS ingredients here]
Hint / rule: Max. ingredients is 10.
social.coop/@smallcircles/1163…
@helge Recipe support on the #ActivityPub fediverse?
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-03-30 05:41:55
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker 🤔
The fun of #SX is that you don't have to learn it, nor do you have to get it taught to you.
Like chess you should #experience it to gain #experience, and you do that by meeting other #people and #practice it. By #SocialExperience with your friends and peers in the chess world #SocialGraph. Weaving #SocialFabric where you can be playful, creative and do experiments, engage in #challenges. This keeps one intrinsically #motivated to stay into the #game. Learn more. Enter a virtuous ⭕ circle of rewarding #exercises.
And perhaps one day. Suddenly and unexpected, #opportunity finds you to play against #MagnusCarlsen. And WIN!
The important thing is: You need not have any *expectation* for that. And most people shouldn't, as it is boils down to 'hanging yourself up to a Vision' if you simply don't possess the 'chess genius gene'. Most people don't.
However you can still #Dream about beating Magnus one day to have fun at every level of your progression path to mastery.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker 🤔
Emergence. So fascinating, that. I came to some deep insight re: commons organization, a concept I call the Paradox of (commons based) Emergence. Hope to post a forum topic on it soon.
I told so often on the channels that I shouldn't explain so much about SX concepts. That it was a failure condition. And it is. It was also my method to reiterate to myself for testing and improving them against various statements. And to jog my bad memory.
#SX #ThoughtExperiment. #Emergence needs 2 ingredients: Simple building blocks and a set of rules. What if you were the first person to invent chess? For chess you can write them down in a heartbeat. Then though, this first designer / inventor of the game, who thinks it through..
Can they imagine at that time Magnus Carlson level complexity?
1/2
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •There exist no other chess players yet. Can they train with others? Will they understand the excitement of a deep philosophical session where the inventor got an inkling of Magnus Carlsen level genius? Probably not.
Today there are libraries full of chess books. But not then. Should the inventor write all that? He can't. The only way to 'spread' chess about, is for others to experience it with others: social experience. Learn by doing.
My mistake was that I was encouraging people into *doing*, but my continuous explanation seemed to ask "join me on something very complex and vague". That complex and vague being the reverse engineering of complex social dynamics that exist in the #commons, back to simple building blocks and rules. What an emergent designer does. But not at all what you need to know to participate in SX solutions. Everyone does their own thing.
The paradox: Concrete SX practice steers intangible emergent value creation, but what you see at a time is just your 2 cents.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker 🤔
#ParadoxOfEmergence. The Paradox of Emergence entails that the more intricate an #EmergentDesign gets, the more complex #WickedProblems it can potentially solve.
However, all the potential power remains dormant, ethereal and invisible, especially to people other than the designer. It can only be properly perceived and valued, either with deep attention and focus on the emergent dynamics of the design. Or by dilligent practice in the field.
A design may represent a beautiful emergent Golden Dragon of Problem Solving. Waiting in its lair under Wicked Problem mountain for when its time to breathe its Fires of Solution onto mankind. Ready to soar. Yet what most other people and even at times the designer themself perceive is merely a tiny mouse. Thus they are unwilling to add their 2 cents to a Potential they cannot grasp. Unable to see how their support adds to a sizable Dragon's Hoard that has already emerged, lending power to the dragon so it may be unleashed.
#SX
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ParadoxOfEmergence
The Paradox Of Emergence is the inability to explain to pragmatic people who say "Show me the money" in terms of what your solution is capable of. A good emergent design that models with emergent forces as building blocks to which it specifies simple rules, may have prepared a Golden Dragon that is ready and waiting to be unleashed. Yet it exists entirely in emergent space, it is pure potential all the way. The Dragon is lurking unseen to anyone but the designers themself, making the solution a tough sell, where investments in time and money are asked for. OTOH once the Dragon has been unleashed, then its true value becomes readily apparent to anyone. Another example is chess. Can the first inventor of the game, convey Magnus Carlson level concepts to demonstrate the power & potential of this new game, where other people only see some simple building blocks and rule set?
#SX #SocialCoding #Emergence
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •#ThoughtProvoker 🤔
In follow-up to "Grassroots fediverse evolution", which tells the tale of my 8 year social experience in the commons of #FOSS and #ActivityPub fedi, I am preparing another article, called "Paradox of emergent chaordic commons", which is a factor to take into account for ensuring Sustainable ecosystem evolution (SEE).
See the article's #poll and consider joining the brainstorm for yourself in my call-to-reflection on fedi's future: social.coop/@smallcircles/1163…
The pillars of the #fediverse, which I honor in my article, @evan and @silverpill are doing fabulous work. But it is also work that more people should do, the chores should be more fairly delegated and balanced between all commons participants.
#CommonsJanitoring. There's a saying that starts with "If we all did our part" which in #SX forms a key tenet. Proactive ecosystem participation should be duly rewarded for the commons to become more sustainable.
Discussion thread is already made:
discuss.coding.social/t/sx-sus…
SX: Sustainable ecosystem evolution (SEE)
Discuss Social Coding🫧 socialcoding..
2026-04-10 07:10:32
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Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •I want to read it, and it's on a topic of importance to me, but I recognize that I don't have the focus or time.
Also, I'm quickly running into information for which I lack referents, making it difficult to digest what the article is saying.
I think what I'd need (for whatever that may be worth) in order to be able to digest this properly is some backgrounders on the major pieces mentioned:
I'd probably have more to ask/say but I keep getting interrupted, which perhaps gives you some idea of why I'm not able to read the article properly right now...
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle the article was described as "fairly long thinkpiece" by @Profpatsch which with 53 min. read time is an understatement of "fairly long" where it comes to typical online content.
Thank you for taking the time and ponder things! I think that is the most important. We are all so pragmatic and want to have quick results. And our society is asking to be hurried. Everything is urgent. All is in peril. But giving in to that urge is a trap, that makes us weaker as mankind to face our wickedest problems.
Besides "Hammock driven development" mentioned in the article, #Emergence is key. And emergence is WEIRD and fascinating. I just tooted about it in..
social.coop/@smallcircles/1163…
--
I used #SolidProject just to contrast a totally opposite approach to how fedi evolves: Fully formal #OpenStandards driven, but with risk to evolve into a 'standards maze' without ecosystem support.
#Mastodon Foundation is a new development. Hopefully they care beyond the app.
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb
🫧 socialcoding..
2026-04-11 07:06:07
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Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •I have been working on a "move slowly and build things" basis for some time now -- arguably to excess [insert rant here]
Unfortunately, as you noted, Life keeps going at its own breakneck pace regardless of whether I'm interested in breaking any necks 😅
I do appreciate a good deep-dive, though, and hopefully I'll have time to absorb more of it
@Profpatsch
cc: @eryn
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle @Profpatsch @eryn
Thank you! I am delighted to hear that. An *intent* in itself is already valuable. And even more so, being *intentional* in what you do. Both of these have emergent properties. So you are *already* practicing #SX by sending this toot, it constitutes your 2 cents. And hence, truly, you may call yourself Social experience designer, if that were your dream job like it is mine. 😊
This is how weird and wonderful emergence is. At least that is my *expectation*. I am also merely practicing, ha ha :)
#SX #Emergence #ParadoxOfEmergence
Khleedril
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle @Profpatsch @eryn "I have been working on a "move slowly and build things" basis for some time now..."
This is absolutely fine. Anybody who thinks a new order of independents is going to emerge in five years is delusional: first, we can all only do so much in a given time, and second we have to wait for each other to come up with successive evolutionary steps.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Khleedril • • •@khleedril @woozle @Profpatsch @eryn
💯 Totally! This is even part of core principles of #SX: Mindfulness.
A movement is timeless and can only progress by participants adding their 2 cts, which accrue over time. Or it pauses, waiting for input. The wicked solution is timeless in a similar way, waiting its lifecycle stage where it solves the wicked problem and sustainably satisfies all stakeholders' evolving needs.
Urgency is provided by individuals. However, if some group or movement has the attitude "Stop the talking, we MUST act NOW and with URGENCY" they have a humongous failure condition right there.
Instead there is prioritised, planned urgency and after breakdown into manageable chunks. It becomes simple then. You talk when you need to talk, and you act when you need to act.
It sounds like a platitude, and perhaps it is in how obvious it is. But if you don't act according to the wisdom of the platitude, perhaps it bears repeating it? Platitudes are a form of universal truths.
Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@khleedril
I just wish being patient didn't require so much patience
@Profpatsch @eryn
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
Aha, good one, I love it! Since I'm still in nerdsniped state on this whole emergence thing, let me try to come up with yet another platitude then... umm 🤔 ......
Aww, got it. Maybe its garbage, platitudal overload, but at least it sounds deep. 🤣
saxnot
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to saxnot • • •@saxnot @woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
You are right. It is flawed. Happens on the quick-toot modern timeline of our time :)
But this is also emergent design: experiment, test, improve in short cycles.
Another attempt at platitude then. Then it is up to others to counter-platitude me again :D
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Algot
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •I see a pin-back button in the works.
May I?
@saxnot @woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Algot • • •@Algot @saxnot @woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
You mean a quote post? Sure, by all means :)
Algot
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Algot • • •@Algot @saxnot @woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
Oh, that is lovely. You can use it public domain CC0 as a quote by me, Arnold Schrijver, assuming that no one before me has formulated it already.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@Algot @saxnot @woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
I'm pondering now if I should make "SX platitude" a SX artifact. I likely will.
You see, there's a concept of "wisdom tiles" in SX, indicating universal truths that all (or most) people agree on, like "think, before you act". The tile I generated represents a Delft-blue "wisdom tile" and these things used to hang in the toilet in our grandparents house when we were young. You typically gifted them on birthdays of your Grandma. They are now kinda disappearing. It is old-fashioned.
The underlying innercircles simple life philosophy that underpins SX goes from the assumption that "simple solutions still exist". And that in terms of wisdom, knowledge, common sense, and life experience *everything* we need to solve the wicked solutions of our time, is already out there. It is the coordinated application in practice during prolonged times where we drop the ball.
Wisdom is relative, in the eye of the beholder. "Wisdom tile" best avoided.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@Algot @saxnot @woozle @khleedril @Profpatsch @eryn
With CC0 there's no need for attribution, but if you want to honor me you may quote as:
-- "Urgent platitudes" quote by Arnold Schrijver, social coder.
saxnot
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Beady Belle Fanchannel
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Khleedril
in reply to Beady Belle Fanchannel • • •Woozle Hypertwin
in reply to Khleedril • • •@khleedril
I'd say it's also good to have a plan; outside of capitalism, it's easier for plans to include things like "spending time following up creative impulses until you feel like you're done".
When people are working together, some of them might even want to be available to help others with their impulsive projects -- and from that, new plans, new branches, or new solutions can emerge.
@Profpatsch @smallcircles @eryn
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •Both, based on need I'd say. In SX its mindfulness principle again, and I can expand the sentence above with "plan, when you need to plan".
Plans are certainly needed at different granularity and scope, for different purpose, and likely having relationships to each other too.
Mindfulness is one thing, but Sustainability core principle is about finding the right balance of when to do what and when. You must plan to anticipate your Risks timely, for instance.
Finally there's Playfulness core principle, which is the most powerful, but also only truly comes into play (pun intended) when the other core principles are addressed to a minimal extent.
Here is the freedom to be creative, to experiment, to be flexible and versatile, to work at your own leisure, to just have fun, etc. This all relates to the Joyful creation SX formula, and the stimulation of intrinsic motivation to participate in the commons, find places where you fit, and foster cohesion.
Khleedril
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Khleedril • • •@khleedril @woozle @Profpatsch
Oh wow, that is even more whopping! The Astro Starlight blog plugin must have optimism bias, or built in read-me encouragement balance correction. 😅
I was delighted to hear your feedback on the other posts, thank you! I will reply in due time on them.
Dawn Ahukanna
in reply to Woozle Hypertwin • • •@woozle
Length of time to read something “from start to finish” should not be the only “value measure” of an expressed written article as I typically don’t read an article only once to fully comprehend(build a personal mental model). Otherwise I will skim and speedread to create a “mental gist” summary.
I’ve read “once through” all of the article with Saturday morning coffee, otherwise I would have read what I could within an allocated timebox to make previous time commitments.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Dawn Ahukanna • • •@dahukanna @woozle
Well said. Esp. when things are HARD, like the wicked problems that ail our world, #ClimateChange for instance. Everyone should contribute their fair share, right? Give just their 2 cents?
#Emergence deals with radical #Simplicity. But simple ain't easy.
Wicked problems require wicked solutions. Numerous tiny #solution increments made all over the place by different people. It requires 'thinking at scale' for prolonged times, and 'doing' on the basis of that. In terms of planning for that 'Bigger Ideas' need time to mature and ripen, and this too involves many people. And is emergent and evolutionary in nature too! This great animation on "Where good ideas come from" calls this the 'Slow Hunch"..
youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPF…
#SX's slow hunch took 11 years.
There's another great vid by Rich HIckey, creator of #Clojure, besides "Hammock Driven Development" mentioned in the article, titled "Simple made Easy" given at a #StrangeLoop conference..
youtube.com/watch?v=SxdOUGdseq…
- YouTube
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Khleedril
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •That's a really strong article, solid all the way through. I'm glad you acknowledge the small web as a plausible alternative to the fediverse.
I'm strongly of the opinion myself that whenever humanity tries to design something it never ends well, but that organic creation is the only way forward (compare new towns to very old ones which have character and community), and also that protocols really need to be as simple as possible.
/cont
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Nicol Wistreich
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •I love the lead image, realise I need to set aside some time to read the article - look forward to doing so.
The graphic reminds me a bit of where the web was at the end of Web 1 / eve of Web 2.0… the W3C was pushing XHTML and tighter standards compliance / semantic precision – the web itself was chaotic and messy – and then the WHATWG formed from Apple/Mozilla/Opera in parallel to instead push for HTML5 with a bunch of nice UI things like CSS gradients, rounded corners, Webfonts, and native video and audio tags/players… and Web 2.0 exploded with pretty UIs but without the semantic quality or even agreeing a single metadata standard between Microdata/Microformats/RDF…
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🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Nicol Wistreich • • •@nicol indeed it does.
There are these opportunities again. To shape a new and better web, get rid of 2.0, the cloud hegemony and browser oligopoly even. Various paradigm shifts like #p2p, #localfirst, #wasm, #HyperMediaWeb, etc. are to our disposal, and new opportunities arise, esp. where it comes to social networking.
#SX #SocialCoding #SocialWeb
Nicol Wistreich
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •Nicol Wistreich
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •I've finally read it, and given how many new concepts, I have only a thinnish grasp of the detail, but the core is very clear and as a 'problem with flat governance' could apply to many other spheres…
Two immediate responses, apologies if long discussed by other means:
- if the challenge of knowing what Fediverse Apps implement which bit of the spec is a blocker, is there a standard way to declare which bits of the spec an app is conformant in? Json / yaml / xml / etc list of specific Activity Pub spec capabilities implemented or diverged from? Presumably once agreed these could be created by anyone and PRd to existing apps (or is that what federation.md is?)
- does the Fediverse need a democratic membership org that funds core maintenance of FEP and pays for some of the core community maintainers to keep looking after the ecosystem / garden (and putting in the time to keep having discussions with different actors). Obvs that's no small ask; my Q: is it the right ask?
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🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Nicol Wistreich • • •@nicol
> if the challenge of knowing what Fediverse Apps implement which bit of the spec is a blocker, is there a standard way to declare which bits of the spec an app is conformant in?
The #ActivityPub #FEP process keeps a list of implementations, in each of its documents. The FEDERATION.md was once introduced as "something to start with before going more complex wrt introspection", a temporary bandaid to bring improvement. Its adoption and use, and later its description as a recommended practice are going very slow though. Still, a very useful practice, compared to lacking such doc and perusing foreign codebases for the info.
> does the Fediverse need a democratic membership org that funds core maintenance of FEP and pays for some of the core community maintainers to keep looking after the ecosystem.
That might be a good solution. For part of a much bigger problem. No #funding bakes bread yet.
I addressed this with @nlnet in the past, and intend to bring it up again next week.
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@nicol @nlnet
It is the right ask though. The ask is: What are ALL the moving gears that make sustainable #FOSS (i.e. #SOSS) be produced, and in an entire healthy technology ecosystem at that.
My investigation around commons based social dynamics started when I had basically given up "trying to herd cats" at #SocialHub where it was already clear that most people didn't much beyond the interest for their own #ActivityPub project, to mingle in the discussions. I mentioned at the time in various thread "Do you want 'community-of-action' or just a mere discussion forum. But even for those questions there's hardly anyone interested.
I knew all this already from my time facilitating Humane Tech Community - now dormant, waiting for value at community.humanetech.com - but needed to more deeply understand.
The notion of #FSDL in its double meaning of #FreeSoftware development lifecycle, and #Fediverse solution delivery lifecycle rose from there, but also the need for a new adoption model.
Humane Tech Community
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🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@nicol @nlnet
This will be named SX FractalHEARTS, an #innovation strategy and technology adoption model (TAM) fit for chaotic grassroots ecosystems (and turn them more chaordic over time).
💞 HEARTS here, like the FSDL, has a double meaning to the acronym too, depending on the Pyramid of Perspective layer that is focused on.
It stands either for Hedonics-based Early Adoption of Research and Technologies at the individual initiative scale of the pyramid (bottom layer)
And then for Hedonic Ecosystems for Adoption of Responsible Technologies at the higher layers, where we want to deal with the externalities that the introduction of the tech has when it lands in society, as best we can.
Best-known is the TAM of regular Bizz, which LinkedIn is full of. I got inspired in 2022 by some alternative also weirdly-acronymed TAM's, see: discuss.coding.social/t/challe…
'Fractal' stands for the pragmatic approach SX takes to organic growth at natural speed and rate of evolution, and its feedback loops.
Challenge: Fixing the Fediverse Technology Adoption Lifecycle
Discuss Social Coding🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@nicol @nlnet
You help with #UI design of #CivicCRM! An example I see often..
A #community-driven #FOSS project where participants, mostly coders, sigh "Oh, if only a #UX designer started contributing, how much better could we reach the broader public". Things like that. And also for various other FSDL-related stakeholder roles you often see this whistful thinking.
So why not actively *attract* people with the skills you need?
The answer often given is that "They are not interested" or something like that. But this is not true. They don't know HOW to contribute, for instance. The workflow of issue-driven feature design-by-concensus that occurs in the issue tracker of a code forge doesn't map well onto workflows a typical designer needs, and vice versa.
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
FSDL says everyone involved is a stakeholder also the devs themself. If you have a Need, then account for it.
In #SX the Process of solution development is *part of* the solution. Its all one sticky note.
How We Reimagine the Social Web
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Nicol Wistreich
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@nlnet there's a blog-post or talk about that – getting involved took years! I was a user for 9 years before I went on a sprint and started to contribute to the UI – initially just with the CSS for some else's extension for a mobile-responsive menu that got merged to core a year later…
It was another five years after that after using lockdown to create a cross-CMS theme for Civi (Finsbury Park)– that I eventually started on a Core-backed UI project in 2022, which we released in 2026. And even now, expertise still feels measured around tangible things like coding skills, over intangible things, such as intuiting UX/design/usability coz "anyone can do that". And that makes sense - you can review code, I can review CSS - but how can folk review 'subjective' UX patterns that are targetted at end-users who are mostly very different to a high-level super-performant, tech-savvy maintainer? I've seen two senior designers try to join in and leave; I just stuck around for years!
🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Nicol Wistreich • • •@nicol @nlnet
I nearly missed your reply in all the discussion my blog triggered. I know exactly what you mean. In my early years at RSDB, largest Print company in Europe then, there was huge focus on interaction design, which was later lost. UX is in theory broad, human-centric, in practice app/product focused.
Last big tech company I worked for as employee, scaled agile etc, had UX folks be part of each team, which helps.
The likely disruptive launch of Claude Design contains lotta talk on the age-old dev vs. designer divide. @diacritica founder of @penpot came on Social coding forum in the early days, and mentioned that a lifelong dream was to bridge this gap once and for all.
discuss.coding.social/t/strate…
It's a pity that the focus on funding, and entrenched ideological clash that followed, chased away Pablo as this was fabulous opportunity to brainstorm more on this.
SX's social activity tracks (SAT's) may be a good instrument.
coding.social/blog/reimagine-s…
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…
Strategy applied to VC funded Free Software
Discuss Social Coding🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@nicol @nlnet @diacritica @penpot
Note that the discussion on VC funding is very relevant too, and in terms of my own stance and opinion that has formed over time, I do agree with the other people in that thread that once you accept VC funding, you have bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant.
What I rue is how principled and valued FOSS movement participants, which I'm part of myself, are often so ideologically engrained on dogmatic standpoints that nuanced discussion becomes impossible. There's no path towards solution-orientation and the kind of sustainable, evolving commons that's able to say: We have the better alternative. Demonstrated by actual benefits and real rewards.
That'd really encourage people to join healthy ecosystem formation, as they become naturally attracted, intrinsically motivated to get the most out of their participation.
Instead I see most activism completely backfire, fizzle out, become ineffective.
SX uses CALMCulture:
discuss.coding.social/t/calm-c…
CALM culture to ensure best outcomes to AI disruption
Discuss Social CodingNicol Wistreich
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •"once you accept VC funding, you have bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant."
Yes+no. I like Pablo's framing of looking at the overall value created by a FOSS project. VC-FOSS Mattermost and VC-FOSS Gitlab are both useful to CiviCRM… even as both slowly enshitify with the 'community editions' dropping more and more features… Moving to Codeberg/etc would/will be a significant undertaking using missing time/resources…
I desperately want Penpot to succeed, I keep trying it at the start of projects then running out of exploration time so go back to Figma – a tool not just VC-funded and AI-pushing but closed source! The UX polish and usability work to remove that friction takes so much time – so I don't judge Penpot any more than Firefox building their biz model on top of Google Search… the key thing seems more the quality of core team & their decisions under the protections of the GPL (or MPL in Penpot's case which I know less about).
@smallcircles @nlnet @diacritica @penpot
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🫧 socialcoding..
in reply to Nicol Wistreich • • •@nicol @nlnet @diacritica
I don't really blame these companies for their choices either, and besides that, there are fields in tech that can't do without VC funding. Think of the hard tech sector, when an invention has to be developed into industrial mass production.
In software land there are some very large projects that also require major funding, and if that is not to be found by other means, then perhaps VC can be considered. A competitive open web browser comes to mind. @penpot too has a major task against Figma, and Gitlab against Github (they position differently, more on the b2b enterprise software dev niche than GH).
By "bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant" under SX, I mean to say: follow the system we are all living in. Bowing is the norm.
To NOT bow under Hypercapitalism requires thinking out of the box and coming up with innovative new collaboration methods, that allow us to circumvent Conway's Law, that causes hypercapitalist practices to creep in.
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in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •@nicol @nlnet @diacritica @penpot
For this last example you can take a look at @linuxfoundation which has adopted a very professional formal organization structure, that is aligned to that of the business and government world.
It gets scolded for that by principled FOSS afficionados, but in order to reach the scale and size, and particular global positive societal impact, and be sustainable in the long term, the chaordic commons of FOSS and Social impact movements have little to offer right now, and seeking business best-practices that have proven to work in modern society is only logical.
Nicol Wistreich
in reply to 🫧 socialcoding.. • • •> "bowed to Hypercapitalism and are now its servant" under SX, I mean to say: follow the system we are all living in. Bowing is the norm."
Yeh the conversation could almost be 'what flavour is your compromise' or 'how do you dance that dance?' – because all of us are making them… And then within that question, are others: 'which part of the compromises are red lines?' or 'are the compromises shrinking or growing?'…
e.g. I badly want to leave Spotify, I keep buying CDs and tracks from Bandcamp but leaving to an alternative stack I need to research, test and migrate to requires time I don't have. Same with only buying ethical cola.
To live ethically in a brutal and regularly harmful system feels like daily practice and renewal; at best more of a dance. The biggest dangers seems at one end apathy and not caring; and at the other self-righteously believing having done a, b or c, one is now beyond fault and able to judge others.
@smallcircles @nlnet @diacritica @penpot @linuxfoundation
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in reply to Nicol Wistreich • • •@nicol @nlnet @diacritica @penpot @linuxfoundation
💯 percent, totally. We strive to be the best person we can, knowing we all have flaws, and necessarily have to make compromises. The person who doesn't isn't on the fediverse, where a lot of demands are placed on participants regarding how they should fit in. This is the fascinating part, the figuring out how to still form cohesive, safe, inclusive, and harmonious online spaces, and safeguard a good balance of norms and values such that it becomes socio-culturally engrained in people.
At largest scale, and in top level of the Pyramid of Perspective, SX deals with the dream / vision of "Harmonious society", where we necessarily also need to live next to the person that isn't wholly aligned with our own beliefs and ideologies, same as we do in the offline world. There need to be clear rules what is and isn't proper behavior, but within that space a certain level of tolerance and nuance is a requirement, which in turn stimulates trust.
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