Morning thoughts, open ears and I wanted to briefly skip through yet stayed for most of the episode so far:

"... And what local-first is, is a principle for designing this kind of collaboration software so that the primary copy of the data is not somewhere in the cloud, but on your own machine. You have a copy of the data locally on your own machine, which means that you can access it while offline, for example, and you can just keep using the software without an internet connection, and it'll just resync the next time you come back online again. ..."

I haven't been listening to tech and software architecture podcasts that often recently but remembering rather well reading through the "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" book back then (which was a concise and great read, like most of the O'Reilly books used to be and maybe still are), speaker got my interest started and I remained there nodding again more often than I probably should. Talking making applications independent of particular cloud vendors. Talking making cloud services useful support tools that can be changed without being tied to them altogether. Giving users the autonomy and full control over their data, specifically also non-technical users. Spreading features absolutely familiar to software developers, such as the fully self-containing autonomy of git repositories, the change tracking and revision history, to other domains (such as social networks, talking ATProto / Bluesky again). Worth following up on.

https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/increasing-users-data-agency/ 

#linkdump #podcasts #social_technology #data_architecture

Remote conversations for the road:

"In this episode Mike Masnick gives us a history of the early internet — starting with what was called the Eternal September, when millions of AOL users flooded the scene, creating a messy, unpredictable, exciting ecosystem of open protocols and terrible UIs."

Enjoyed listening to this. I do have a mixed opinion on that protocols-over-platform point of view but there's a ot of stuff in here to wrap head around for a bit. Specifically, that kind of looking back at the early internet, at how things transformed from a per-se decentralized, fragmented environment to a set of services that were actually fun to use and made technology accessible to a whole wider load of human beings before eventually turning into shady, despicable structures one should rather avoid. Specifically, too, that looking back at how a certain group of people nowadays tends to ignore that part of the story and opts to limit things to the negative aspects that came along later. Specifically, too, that ATProto / Bluesky approach of trying to learn from both - decentralization as a crucial aspect for being in power, in control, and usability, accessibility for less tech-savvy people being an undisputable requirement to make technology that serves a particular purpose. Worth checking out.

https://www.themaybe.org/podcast/nodestar-the-eternal-september-w-mike-masnick 

#podcasts #social_networks #social_technology #mike_masnick #the_maybe