On Nov 22, 2009, at 7:53 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

FaceBook reminds me too much of AOL when it first came onto the Internet...

Yup.

I have been interested in internet/web-enabled social systems since 1979 when I first got an account on a UNIX machine and discovered UUNet Mail and News in it's somewhat early form.

Ditto.  Remember Gopher?

Unfortunately, there is something about what happens when the unwashed masses use these technologies that is offensive to me. I'm probably just some kind of elitist.

Me too, I wish the "civilians" weren't destroying my internet.

<snip>

But let me be clear why I'm trying all this stuff. SFX has found itself without administrators and with a hosting service that's more difficult, but much more computer savvy, than facebook, twitter, blogspot, pbwiki, ... Basically we have a user community with contempt for computing and complexity both. (there are a few exceptions, natch)

So several of us who alas are computer savvy, are starting to think we should move sfx off a hosting service with its complexity onto the pre- built, user oriented, non-hosted cloud. And to be fair, there's a lot of good stuff that is starting to merge into something that could replace Joyent/Wordpress with a mashup of Blogspot, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, Maps/Earth, Youtube, Flickr, and so on.

I think we old timers have pushed the new generation non-tech folks into a trap they'd prefer to skip. So I'd like to give them their head for a bit and see how it goes. Become self-administered. No joke, I'm for real here. Lose hosting, replace with the flower-child web. I think they can pull it off.

And, no, I Won't Fix Their Computer!  :)

   -- Owen


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