Federating again

Hello 👋 from the Iso Omena Library.

I'm here again. It continues to be a beautiful inspiring place to sit in. And so I am.

Finland's tryst with spring continues. It had snowed here this past Tuesday. I had gotten out of bed, finished cleaning up and was about to start my yoga routine.

Then I looked out the window.

My backyard was covered in snow. If it had been just that, I would have continued. And not felt compelled to wake Prerna up. But it was not just that. It was still snowing. It was then that I woke Prerna up and said, look, spring!

Then I decided not to go to office in this weather. I had gone through the entire winter without falling, and did not want to start now. When the season was officially over.

And so I did not. As did many other Finns. By this time many have already swapped their winter tyres with the summer ones. And hence, can not take their cars out.

Here's a picture from Tuesday.

And one from today.

One of the big news of the week was that Ghost will be federating. Let's unpack this a bit. Because this is important.

How it used to work

You would spin up a server, have your website and publish there. You would usually get other people to join you and become a publication.

Then came the social networks

Well you know, Orkut (Oh Orkut!) and then the big blue Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X now) and so on.

You log in to a platform. You create your account there. And then you post. But none of it belongs to you. If you don't like where you are, you can't do anything. You are stuck! Or, you can delete everything you've created and that's that.

That's oversimplifying it a bit. And also there's the issue of the algorithms. But that's a good summary of it.

Ok, so what is this about?

ActivityPub is a protocol, like HTML for social media. It allows you to be in control of your stuff. It allows people to follow you across platforms. It allows you to leave, if you're unhappy and take your content with you. It is open. 😄

Threads would someday support this. They are testing integration with Mastodon.

Why am I excited about his?

Because, this is hosted on Ghost.

And I would love to make this the centre of my online existence. I would love to create my identity here. An identity I own. An identity I can control.

I would love to post here once, and have it show at different places.

I would love for this to be the place from where I can interact with people.

Also, this is open! 😄

The other thing this week is that Apple is holding the iPad event on May 7th.

I am looking forward to it, as I am looking forward to getting an iPad Air.

I am thinking about

How does information flow?

Information and knowledge are different things.

Information is just information. It's there. Out on a webpage, a quote in a book somewhere.

Information becomes knowledge after it has been processed. After you have digested it, thought about it, added context to it. Then it becomes knowledge, your knowledge.

I am reading

I finished reading Redshirts on Thursday. Now reading Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick. There's no story here. I just picked this from the sci-fi section at the library. I was figuring out how the borrow system works.

And that is all folks! See you next week.