Specifying Spring ’83

Metadata
Highlights
- Digital spaces are sometimes analogized to homes or restaurants, with the implication that of course you’re free to kick someone out, just as you would in your home or restaurant. Back before I’d ever hosted anything for anyone, I nodded along to this analogy, but now I see that it’s incomplete, because people only visit your home or restaurant while you’re there. These real spaces are, by the standards of digital spaces, almost impossibly well-moderated. (View Highlight)
- Does this protocol recreate something that already exists?
The opportunity before us, as investigators and experimenters in the 2020s, isn’t to make Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram again, just “in a better way” this time. Repeating myself from above: a decentralized or federated timeline is still a timeline, and for me, the timeline is the problem.
This digital medium remains liquid, protean, full of potential. Even after a decade of stasis, these pixels, and the ways of relating behind them, will eagerly become whatever you imagine. (View Highlight)
title: “Specifying Spring ’83”
author: “Robin Sloan”
url: ”https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/specifying-spring-83/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: reader
tags: media/articles
Specifying Spring ’83

Metadata
Highlights
- Digital spaces are sometimes analogized to homes or restaurants, with the implication that of course you’re free to kick someone out, just as you would in your home or restaurant. Back before I’d ever hosted anything for anyone, I nodded along to this analogy, but now I see that it’s incomplete, because people only visit your home or restaurant while you’re there. These real spaces are, by the standards of digital spaces, almost impossibly well-moderated. (View Highlight)
- Does this protocol recreate something that already exists?
The opportunity before us, as investigators and experimenters in the 2020s, isn’t to make Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram again, just “in a better way” this time. Repeating myself from above: a decentralized or federated timeline is still a timeline, and for me, the timeline is the problem.
This digital medium remains liquid, protean, full of potential. Even after a decade of stasis, these pixels, and the ways of relating behind them, will eagerly become whatever you imagine. (View Highlight)