@evan@cosocial.ca
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

evan

@evan@cosocial.ca

He/him. Board member at CoSocial.ca.

Director of Open Technology at Open Earth Foundation (OEF).

Founder of Wikitravel, StatusNet, identi.ca, Fuzzy.ai. CTO of Breather, TRU LUV and MTTR.

Creator of pump.io. Co-creator of GNU social.

Co-chair of the Social Web Working Group at W3C. Co-author of ActivityStreams 2.0. Co-author of ActivityPub. Co-author of OStatus.

Grad student in CS at Georgia Tech.

This network has been my life's work. Thanks for making it.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mmasnick, to random
@mmasnick@mastodon.social avatar

It's been six months since Elon took over Twitter. I have some thoughts on the "Twitter diaspora" and the current decentralized alternatives: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/28/six-months-in-thoughts-on-the-current-post-twitter-diaspora-options/

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@KelsonV @mmasnick so, why bother?

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@uthne @mmasnick awesome!

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@mmasnick you don't really talk about governance.

One of these is an open standard developed and supported by the W3C, with dozens of implementations.

The others are house protocols, created and controlled by a single entity, with one implementation.

I like to hear that BS is downplaying their snowflake protocol. I hope they switch over to ActivityPub soon.

Thanks for the good article!

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@meredithw @mmasnick yes, open standards like SMTP are great.

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

tap tap Is thing thing on? 🎙️

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@arstechnica welcome!

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

If offered the chance, would you leave Earth?

#EvanPoll #poll

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@Space6host let's get started

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@Space6host we're not inherently toxic.

And Earth is hurt but resilient. We can be part of a thriving planet here.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

This was interesting! I'm a qualified yes. I believe we will eventually inhabit the solar system, and I'd like to visit space. But Earth is home, and it's where I want to live permanently. I also would want to see lower carbon footprint to space travel before I'd go.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

The difference between here and other places is that you're a participant here.

All of us are building this network together, right now.

Is it perfect? Not yet. Not by a long shot!

But we can keep fixing it and making it what we want. Together, collectively, every day.

This social web we're building isn't a product on a supermarket shelf. It's a society. It's a whole world.

I'm here for the long run. I'm going to keep doing what I can. Thanks for doing what you're doing. I see you. Thanks.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@jeffalyanak great! We can do that.

evacide, to random
@evacide@hachyderm.io avatar

Running a Mastodon instance is thankless work, which I imagine is why I've seen so many admins burn out already.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@elplatt @evacide interesting! I was thinking more about human support. But maybe software changes would help too.

OkieSpaceQueen, to random

When presenting to the general public in the planetarium I encounter people with a wide variety of misconceptions.

Some of them I understand.

There are a lot of people that think the moon doesn't rotate and I understand why they might think that.

There are a fewer people that think the moon might be flat, and when questioned I see why they thought that.

There are at least 3 people in Oklahoma and 1 in Kansas that thought the moon was the back of the sun. No idea where that's from.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen I'm super sorry. I know you don't tell people they're dumb. I shouldn't have said it that way.

I also know that explaining how things are is a lot easier than explaining how we know they're that way.

Like, how we know the sun isn't on fire, and how we know the shape of the Milky Way.

They're tough, even if you're open to learning.

Anyway, it sounds like you do it the hard way, which I love to hear but also find terrifying. Thanks for the work you do.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen ha! I guess I feel like a lot of people downplay how much of a jump it is.

It took a lot of very smart people collaborating over centuries to propose, test, and confirm the heliocentric theory.

And a lot of the evidence is only easy to collect at certain times, like lunar eclipses or the equinox.

It's also not really actionable information for most of us in our daily lives.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen so, I think convincing people must be really hard!

evan, (edited )
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen so my question is, when people don't understand the heliocentric principle, do you tell them they're wrong and they should believe scientists, or do you take them step by step from the first approximation to the real situation?

UPDATE: I used the wrong language here; I said "dumb" when I meant "wrong" or "incorrect". OSQ wouldn't tell people they're dumb. I'm sorry for the clumsy wording.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen I feel like I've seen this in children's books and comic strips. When day turns to night, the smiling sun face flips over like a coin, showing a smiling moon face.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@OkieSpaceQueen so, I have a question for you.

Understanding that the moon, earth and sun are roughly spherical, all rotate, and are in orbit around each other is not immediately obvious, or even easy to prove.

You can live a pretty reasonable life with the first approximation that the earth is a flat surface, that the sun and moon are flat circles that move through the sky, and that they get from their setting point to their next rising point by moving underground or being recreated each day.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@Anke @OkieSpaceQueen yeah, absolutely. We also do replications of famous experiments in primary and secondary school, both to confirm what we've learned, and to practice the process of generating experimental evidence.

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@barrygoldman1 this is a very cool process. Thanks for sharing it!

kissane, to random
@kissane@mstdn.social avatar

my feed is very heavy on intense lectures today and it’s like…the thing about hammering away on network ethics (even when you are right) vs making it ridiculously easy for people to join and find their friends and follow people posting dumb jokes is that only one of those things meets the big human need for connection and play (even when the easy fun path might lead directly off a cliff)

it’s nice to be right, but making ethically better things way more effective is a much stronger move 🤷🏻

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@darius @kissane THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS

evan,
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

@kissane this is a great point! We do need to keep improving the onboarding, the human connections, and the fun.

This technology is here for us to build up relationships. That's why it was made. We need to keep moving that forward.

passthejoe, to fediverse
@passthejoe@ruby.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    evan,
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    @passthejoe so, I guess that's the difference between a cable TV channel and a human conversation.

    If I think of you as a TV channel, if I don't like what I see, I just switch to the next channel. You don't know or care about me, until your Nielsen ratings come in.

    If I think of you as a human being, I want to communicate with you, and I want to help you communicate with others. If we share values, and you might be making mistakes, I tell you. That's what we do for each other. We both care.

    TexasObserver, to random
    @TexasObserver@texasobserver.social avatar

    Happy Friday!

    For this week's story, we'll share Michelle Pitcher's interview with journalist Jason Walker, who bravely reports on conditions inside even though it puts his life at risk.
    https://www.texasobserver.org/prison-journalist-shows-why-we-need-a-free-press-even-behind-bars/

    If you know anything about prison , you know both how brave Jason is, and how hard Michelle had to work to get inside to report this story.


    evan,
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    @TexasObserver @arstechnica just joined today!

    sjvn, to random
    @sjvn@mastodon.social avatar

    Neat! I won a 2022 Trade, Association, Business Publications International (TABPI) Gold for my ComputerWorld newsletter/column Business Critical. These are awards for best English language business to business journalism. I've still got it!
    https://www.tabpi.org/news/tabbies/computerworld-gold

    evan,
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    @sjvn wow! Thanks for the good work you do!

    Greg, to random
    @Greg@social.coop avatar

    When you go to a new (to you) open source project's issue tracker and you see a familiar name from an open source project you're a part of... and not a good familiar.

    And yup, they're behaving in exactly the same way.

    Sigh.

    evan,
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    @Greg uh oh

    mick, to fediverse
    @mick@cosocial.ca avatar

    @evan do you have a favourite explainer (or explainers?)

    evan,
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    @mick not really. 🫤

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