Changing the system is a political choice. Any technology is politic.
Moving from email technology to web technology is a real politic affair
which contradicts the common ideas deployed in this list. Freedom to
publish, freedom to communicate. Equality.
I receive and read Nettime in a separate custom folder, in plain text,
with my choosen font family made for a good reading. I can concentrate
on the contents only, and not be disturbed by any other web tech on the
page. I have all my received and sent emails on my Thunderbird since my
second mail account in 1996. When I search something in the posts, I
have the result in a matter of seconds. With a good plugin, I could
classify the posts by keywords if I wanted to. I could use very clever
text analysis tools on all contents. I can automatically translate the
contents with the adapted plugin. I can automatically arrange the post
in conversations, and print or export the total content of a
conversation. I can forward some post to someone in a second. I can
forward it encrypted for someone in a dictatorial country in a second. I
can BCC my posts to other folks not subscribing to the list. My posts
can be automatically corrected like into a text editor (not the case
today...). I can automatically (POP3) download my emails when I have
connectivity, and read them, or compose answers when I don't have
connectivity in the middle of my desert.
No other technology can concentrate so usefull management of words and
knowledge.
All this can be done without any tracking technology: pixel, cookie or
other big brother tech related to a html content on a web server running
a fediverse service.
Plus, Mail servers can run on the resilient Guifi.net or Freifunk.org or
other independant/resilient/low-cost/self-managed alternative networks,
with very low bandwith, and very light server distribution running on 3
watts-consuming servers. We need to preserve this low-tech possibility,
because in the next decennies, the avaibility of energy, freedom of
speech, free networks, data centers, large bandwith, is not guaranteed
at all.
At the opposite, any fediverse service can only run on a more complex
server, because it's distributing all sort of media and web
technologies. It's more deeply linked to the hardware and software
industry, and their updates, to the political nature of networks through
their technologies, to the threats to freedom of speech, to the business
aspect of networks. It's more deeply linked to the Gafam Batx
colonialisms which invades all HTML pages including fediverse services,
because it's so easy to embbed a tracking tech or an advertising in any
HTML document. The same for tracking techs created by intelligence
services, through geolocation and other meta data. It's also so easy to
add an advertising near a fediverse service frame. Don't forget that our
political future is moving to techno/eco/dictatorship. The smallest
metadatas we release, the better.
I am not opposed to fediverse technologies. I use them. But Nettime
survives, in good health, because of the email technology. The medium is
the message. Going to web technologies would sign its death.
JN
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: