Just a guy. I work. I wonder. I write.
Just like a lot of new folk in Geminispace the thought came to me to write this long drawn out manifesto of what I hate about HTTPland and how much I love things "smolweb." A perusal around Geminispace revealed that this would truly be a duplicative waste of effort. Without any modesty I have nothing new to say that has not already been better said by others.
Most of the posts were similar in content and tone but I would like to point out two posts in particular. The first was a post by cmccabe and in it he compares the smolweb to the Slow Movement. My knowledge of the slow movement and it's philosophy is somewhat limited but in broad general terms it seems reasonable to me and the connection between the smolweb and the slow movement seems reasonable and plausible.
cmccabe's original post
Wikipedia on Slow Movement
I have a little more familiarity with the second post as I have been on the Fediverse almost from the beginning of it. Back when I first got online all that existed online were telnet access to BBS, FTP, email, USENET, and Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Gopher and HTTP were still a few years away from even appearing and a couple more before they became known. I blogged like a maniac when blogging became the thing. Then came microblogging.
Well, let's just say I liked microblogging. For 15 years or so I have kept microblogging accounts on just about every platform out there. I posted like a madman. I posted everything. Hours and hours were consumed with the minutiae of not only my life but the lives of others.
Somewhere along the line I got disgusted with the whole concept of microblogging. Like so many people I had my fill of all the same things as everyone else. Similar to aelspire's post, the idea of everyone having a personal website, following each other with RSS, and communicating with email landed in my noggin and here we are today.
aelspire I don't understand social media
Somewhere along my internet life journey I said that I wanted my internet to be slow, organic, simple, and democratic. I think that my journey may have reached this point. Yes I have to run through a hoop to get a post onto gemini but other than that it is simple. Email is also simple. RSS is simple. As any of you can testify all of these things can work at as slow a pace as you desire. Any one with any little agenda can post their rants. It is up to you (and not big tech somewhere) to choose what you fill your feed with. How more democratic can you get?
Surely, this is not a manifesto in the true sense of the word. It is just my thoughts about not writing a manifesto. ;-)
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PLEASE NOTE: Most of the links on these pages are to sites using the gemini protocol. What that means is that instead of a link being https://example.com the link is gemini://example.com . To my knowledge no regular web browser works with the gemini protocol. Some browsers may have an extension for browsing gemini. Otherwise you will need a gemini browser to work the links.