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I agree. How do we start the movement back to a more decentralized software daily life. This is solely a feeling: I remember my youth being filled with an ever-

by fumar 8y ago

I agree. How do we start the movement back to a more decentralized software daily life. This is solely a feeling: I remember my youth being filled with an ever-changing and growing amount web portals, communication tools, and methods of of sharing data (music). Today, a few big entities control all of those experiences. I don't think my life is any better for having a Google controlled cloud service (gdrive) vs another open source or vendor solution. I found it enthralling to be online and discovering new experiences as a kid. Somehow that is gone today. Could just be my age.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
For me, part of that involves quitting the old circles (FB for example) and getting used to not being in touch with every old acquaintance. Once you’ve accepted that, you’ll try any new service. I recall how switching to Mac and getting over not having windows apps helped me ultimately switch to Linux.
asdff 8y ago
These services never went away. I browse reddit and HN through their RSS feeds almost exclusively.
jethro_tell 8y ago
A big thing here is a huge chunk of the internet is getting content discovery from just a couple places with ulterior motives. We used to seek out people who made good content and add it to a hand managed rss feed, I used to peruse 1000 articles and posts a week from friends, people that I trusted, people that I distrusted, scientific journals, and niche hobbies. I talked to someone this week that wasy saying they wouldn't even know how to find new music without youtube. 10 years younger than me and discovery is a lost art. I'm not sure what resets this, and I fear the very idea of it will be completely lost in the near future.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  Ironically people still send e-mail newsletters, and I got to this link through my RSS feed.
- asdff 8y ago
  You can follow virtually anything on RSS still. Blogs, every biology journal that I know of, pubmed or google scholar search term RSS feeds (super useful, can be a topic, journal, even author), subreddits, HN, youtube channels, twitter, email newsletters (kill the newsletter), the list goes on and on and there are even services to turn things that don't have RSS feeds into an RSS feed (like kill the newsletter). My workflow is have things categorized in inoreader and push interesting articles to pocket (or just open the HN/reddit thread). No paywall, and no ads. There's never been a better time to follow RSS feeds. Your discovery would be from either your own search engine cleverness derived from spotting a topic in your articles, or directly shared to you by what you follow, like good topics in HN. NYT and LA times are both really good at sharing content from other newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other sources in their newsletters (which I follow via an atom feed from kill the newsletter). Facebook, twitter, youtube, and the ilk are all pretty poor at discovery, to be honest. Discovery to the decision makers at these platforms is more towards manipulating into more and more advertising engagement than any knowledge dissemination.
mirkules 8y ago
> How do we start the movement back toward decentralized software daily life? The difference between now and “back then” is that service providers were not optimizing for eyeballs or subscribers or clicks. Chat software was created to actually create communication between people. Subscription software didn’t exist and was balked-at. So, to answer the question - to swing the pendulum back we need to start building software for its utility again, on open, non-subscription platforms.

by fumar 8y ago

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

For me, part of that involves quitting the old circles (FB for example) and getting used to not being in touch with every old acquaintance. Once you’ve accepted that, you’ll try any new service. I recall how switching to Mac and getting over not having windows apps helped me ultimately switch to Linux.

asdff 8y ago

These services never went away. I browse reddit and HN through their RSS feeds almost exclusively.

jethro_tell 8y ago

A big thing here is a huge chunk of the internet is getting content discovery from just a couple places with ulterior motives. We used to seek out people who made good content and add it to a hand managed rss feed, I used to peruse 1000 articles and posts a week from friends, people that I trusted, people that I distrusted, scientific journals, and niche hobbies. I talked to someone this week that wasy saying they wouldn't even know how to find new music without youtube. 10 years younger than me and discovery is a lost art. I'm not sure what resets this, and I fear the very idea of it will be completely lost in the near future.

tomjen3 8y ago
Ironically people still send e-mail newsletters, and I got to this link through my RSS feed.
asdff 8y ago
You can follow virtually anything on RSS still. Blogs, every biology journal that I know of, pubmed or google scholar search term RSS feeds (super useful, can be a topic, journal, even author), subreddits, HN, youtube channels, twitter, email newsletters (kill the newsletter), the list goes on and on and there are even services to turn things that don't have RSS feeds into an RSS feed (like kill the newsletter). My workflow is have things categorized in inoreader and push interesting articles to pocket (or just open the HN/reddit thread). No paywall, and no ads. There's never been a better time to follow RSS feeds. Your discovery would be from either your own search engine cleverness derived from spotting a topic in your articles, or directly shared to you by what you follow, like good topics in HN. NYT and LA times are both really good at sharing content from other newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other sources in their newsletters (which I follow via an atom feed from kill the newsletter). Facebook, twitter, youtube, and the ilk are all pretty poor at discovery, to be honest. Discovery to the decision makers at these platforms is more towards manipulating into more and more advertising engagement than any knowledge dissemination.

mirkules 8y ago

> How do we start the movement back toward decentralized software daily life? The difference between now and “back then” is that service providers were not optimizing for eyeballs or subscribers or clicks. Chat software was created to actually create communication between people. Subscription software didn’t exist and was balked-at. So, to answer the question - to swing the pendulum back we need to start building software for its utility again, on open, non-subscription platforms.