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I promise to make this the only post *about* gemini accessible from my main gemlog going forwards. I would suggest that if there's some way, some 'discipline', perhaps, in which conversations on gemini *on* gemini (subject) could be pushed to a back-channel rather than front-and-centre on gemini capsules, this would be preferable. If I make future posts about gemini itself, which is likely, I may create a separate page on my capsule, keep it off my main feed, and push all the gemini-focused posts there.
Conversations on gemini *on* gemini are a bit like a book-club talking not about the subject or content of a given book but its formatting, font, the medium of the novel itself, its distribution, printing, accessibility, cost, shipping, line spacing, details about ink, and/or the whole community of book readers itself. As a student of media I do find this kind of thing very interesting, about any form of media be it the form of a novel, or the form of content on gemini - but as someone who is actually primarily more interested in gemini as a creative, non-commercial, fiercely independent application of cyberspace and the cultivation of a community therein, it is ultimately the content from this community on other subjects, and this phenomena of an indie community itself, that interests me as my primary reason for using gemini. For that reason, it does sadden me a bit to see so much gemini-focused content on gemini. Perhaps others feel differently.
So, a promise: from here on in, for any gemini-focused musings from myself, I will find more of a back-channel to communicate and thread these, so that the main non-gemini focused aspect of my capsule here are front and centre, matching my preference.
I haven't been on the mailing list for about a year now. Too much traffic. I've heard there's been some intensity there. I hope everyone's okay and useful ways can be found to streamline any development/philosophy-focused discussions *on* gemini.
I v.much appreciate the sentiment in tomasino's post on 'making gemini easy'[1]. I agree. I'm personally a real amateur techie just barely capable of spinning up a server and running free software. And though I'm constantly trying to explore and improve my free-software and *nix knowledge, I don't like a high technical barrier to entry to an independent space. If we contrast what it is to run a gemini capsule in 2021 to what it was to, say, print a zine in 1994, I can see so many additional steps on the former against the punk ease-of-application of the latter. Should it be that easy? Yes.
That said, I'm not wedded to gemini and change is also good. Perhaps gemini is ultimately an experiment in non-web protocols through which new things will emerge. I try to think: let's imagine if the world doesn't collapse in all the ways that it's looking like it will over the next few decades, if there were a *good design* for community-based information mediation in the kind-of way that gemini supports (whilst also being light-weight, environmentally considered and sustainable), what might that look like? What would a good protocol or tool design look like? Is there some more *nix philosophy to bring into this thinking? Is there a 'do one thing and do it well' (whilst enabling the modularity of these 'doing-one-thing-well' tools to be combined and work together) approach to protocol creation of this kind? Perhaps gemini is a sketchbook of future design thinking for networked information flows.
On the above, I think continually returning to *nix thinking and the KISS principle may be useful for protocol/indie-cyberspace design thinking. We have a tendency to overcomplicate because of all the over-complication we've seen that the web has grown into, but really it is restriction and the recognition of the qualities of a tool (it's 'technicity') that determine its quality as a tool. And where tools may retain a design philosophy that enables them to work with other tools, this is far better than a 'fuck it we can just extend this thing to do *everything we need*' approach.
Lastly, on the above and extending into other design thinking around technology, I would heartily recommend checking out the first 20-or-so pages, at least, of gilbert simondon's 'on the mode of existence of technical objects' as a creative way of re-focusing thinking on technology and getting mentally playful with everything happening in this space.
Once again the leaves are yellowing in london and there's a freshness to the colder autumn air. Last week I launched a piece of work I had been managing for around 2-months, working with a dev agency with whom I had a number of challenges - but we got there in the end. Now it's time to chill out a bit so I'm trying to make work a less intense domain over the next few weeks or so. That said, my line manager is moving on and his position is coming up, and I'm tempted to go for it. My whole career I've avoided being in a position of managing anyone, intentionally. But this position, if I were to get it, would put me as the lead of a very small two-person team, which could be a neat arrangement if I found the right second person to bring in.
This past couple of months I've had a really over-bearing crush on someone and I'm tempted not to shy away from it but lean into it and see if there could be something there. It's a nice feeling but sometimes over-whelming; I wake up and she's on my mind, or we go out together and I just get more and more into her. Let's see what happens..
Oh, and I've been continually ramping up my soundsystem setup as well. I've done a couple of live-streams of a vinyl mix, once via an icecast server spun up here on subphase, another time on tilderadio. I'll do some more of these and will schedule/announce when they'll be.
Some recent soundsystem hardware purchases include:
~flow
2021-11-07 update following suggestion by StackSmith[2] to codify gemini-focused articles (♊) in title + post reference
♊ Marking Tech posts with ♊(Gemini glyph) or ⚙
Tags: #gemini