💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › stack › 21663 captured on 2024-12-17 at 15:18:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Re: "I was commenting on a discussion started by @HansBrix about..."
I guess I shouldn't feel so surprized when this comes up. I haven't been able to explain to my mother the difference between an application or a web site, and I cringe every time she "gets her yahoo mail from google"... Android and Apple have been instrumental in this -- taking a simple idea of files and folders and turning them into weird stuff that just appears in random places, sometimes only when the Internet is on (which is always for most people these days).
I guess, yes, Gemini users are of a 'higher quality' by that metric-- they can run software that is not preinstalled. No wonder all we talk about is computers.
Nov 09 · 5 weeks ago
👻 darkghost [OP] · Nov 09 at 19:25:
While I don't think there's any degree of technical competence to downloading a Gemini browser and going from there, there is a degree of technical competence needed to have both awareness and interest in it. For most folks, "the web" and "the internet" are the same thing. "So this Gemini is like another internet?" Then blood starts shooting out of my ears for some reason.
Having watched kids who are “good at computers” try to tap on monitors and saying “it’s broke” because they don’t know a mouse and assume everything is touch and swipe, I’m very pessimistic about technical competence going forward.
Everyone who grew up in the walled garden app bubble seems to have similar technological knowledge to an 80-year-old. They are the kind of users who, if you tell them to double click on the desktop, they might turn a pen upside down and click it twice against the table.
But damn, the kids are fast with swiping, poking, and pounding out words on the insanely stupid tiny keyboard !
Yeah. The tech literate people tend to ask “what’s the point”.
You can tell them Gemini’s value proposition and then they still ask, “What’s the point?”
I don’t think that’s a kind of user you can bring over. Gemini is solving a problem that they don’t consider to be a problem.
It's a pretty wonderful self-selecting system. You realize you need something like Gemini, and there it is! And if you don't need it, enjoy whatever you have. I am all for tolerance and against preaching. It always annoys me when people come here with "How do we convert everyone" attitude!
And there are others who erroneously think that we need to expand exponentially or die, based on their experiences with inflationary networks, startups, and economics in general.
Since we are not competing, network effect be damned. We can grow slowly, or not grow at all, as long as there are enough of us here making things interesting.
👻 darkghost [OP] · Nov 10 at 14:14:
I definitely wouldn't advocate for driving adoption. Once the big data brokers and other corporations catch a wiff of untapped revenue potential, it's all over. I'm old enough to remember the early days of the internet. Few companies, lots of normal folks sharing their weird interests. It was a mix of people who were technically competent, aware of its existence, curious about it, and motivated to get connected. Gemini is three out of four of those.
I always remember the gopher holes being annoying to navigate and the web sites being a crapshoot because you never knew how long it would take to load if someone decided to put 50 images in a page.
Gemini strikes a nice balance, and I love how skyjake has make images "click to view inline" in his client.
i think the main problem is that we failed computer education, whatever that means. companies that sell computers and later, mobile computers called phones, have no commercial interest in teaching computer skills. instead they have interest in uneducated users who don't know about the file system. these uneducaned users are easier to keep as hostages. hostages that have no idea how to survive if they do not use ios or android or windows or macos. they have to be terrified of change.
more educated users that understand what is file system and can switch are kept by proprietary 'killer apps' and deceptive design. also good design, since commerce has lots of money for ui/ux to be good and also to be addictive.
what i don't understand is how open source projects move support chats from irc to discord.
okay, discord may have features they like and that irc lacks.
but irc is an open protocol, can be self hosted, everyone can implement a server or a client (i have implemented my client), there are plenty of open source irc clients.
i guess they move to discord because they don't distinguish between open source and free software and because they don't actually care about software liberties.
today for people it is normal that the software controls them. they get frustrated or sad, but overcome tham by paying to the software vendors and 'unlocking' features like background playback in youtube.
also today it is hard for people to use irc. they need to make choices. search for a client. or use a web client when avairable. fill the edit boxes. they are used to run proprietary messenger app, give necessary accesses to addressbook etc and see it work.
to use gemini people should
1) know of its existence
why would they if they are perfectly happy with their proprietary apps? one should feel unhappy to search for an alternative.
2) value the alternative idea enough to try searching and downloading a gemini browser.
if it's a console browser then most likely a windows or macos user will be terrified by 'not accessible' user experience, close it, mark it as 'for programmers' in mind.
if they are actually programmers, then mark it as ... somethiwg stupid because that's what peoplebdo when they don't undersmand why bother.
3) after they know, or search for the alternative and found it, then if they were able to use it, they need to appreciate it. feel that they share the values.
but why would they have the values? in the world, or mind when it is normal to use proprietary youtube app and have preinstalled crap, why would they value something as they would think 'less usable', rather than more?
people that try to use floss complain all the time about the design, ui/ux, and lack of features.
then we, often try to entourage them keept using the software ...
and wait for feature to be implemented.
but te reality is, we have uncomparable power with commercial vendors and we won't have the design or ui/ux or features as they are able to provide.
so if some people are ready to sacrifice some of 'usability', whatever that means, to use something like 'conversations' jabber app, or gnome, most of them won't be drawn to the opposite: extreme minimalism gemini suggests.
i am drawn to. i am fed up by js and i have no hope that web might improve. web is shaped by commerce and serves the commercial interests of some people. i want only to contribute mo xmpp, to gemini, to spaces that are free of those players.
i also like minimalism and modernism.
thus i don't like rust: i canwot compile it on my pinebook. but i like oberon, and i like fpc (freepascal compiler) and from c world i like tcc. if i was a c programmer i would try to make sure my code compiles without gcc extensions by the most simple c compiler.
i like 'form follows function' design and i dislike superfluity. given commerce and feature driven world i am even more attracted to the inclemency of gemini or oberon. attracted to assembly programming for simple cpu's like 6502.
some think of le corbusier an of modernist. i don't think so. since big wide roads without sidewalks and high rises make people dependable on cars and corporations, while i perceive modernism as liberating art.
👻 darkghost [OP] · Nov 12 at 00:50:
I've also seen a retreat from IRC to discord, with discord even replacing things like discussion boards and email lists on some projects! (wtf!)
I will not use Discord as a matter of principle.
Not a fan of Discord - confusing and never useful, but curious about your principles.
I'll keep it simple.
The way they run things is horrible. There is no consistency in what is and isn't allowed, and the owners of Discord have shielded some truly disturbing behavior.
You own nothing. You have nothing. All of it can vanish the second someone decided it should for reasons you will never know. And because you own and control nothing getting your data off it isn't a thing.
It's the worst, most volatile place to build content or community, making it a terrible investment of your time and attention.
👻 darkghost [OP] · Nov 15 at 11:26:
Discord is going through the usual boom/bust cycle of all the Silicon Valley startups. Its valuation is purported to be $15 billion. Sure... At some point in the not-too-distant future, they're going to need to make money to justify that valuation. That's when good platforms decline. They've already sent up a trial balloon around NFTs and cryptocurrency in 2021. I'm willing to bet we will see an attempt to hop on the AI bandwagon soon. Probably a pivot to be more like Zoom and and market to businesses. Free will be crippled. We've seen this song and dance before and it doesn't happen with open platforms like email or IRC which continue to exist and aren't dependent on the Q3 results.
Hopefully Telegram will be right behind them.
I was commenting on a discussion started by @HansBrix about the web browser. In another thread, they pointed out how the browser is just about everything these days and that's why people can live with ChromeOS. It is quite a bit absurd, and represents the regression in technology I feared in the 90s. The personal computer revolution was a revolution because it meant anyone could use a computer and didn't have to pay for mainframe time or shared access. Today's cloud is just the mainframe era...