Dear friends,
I hope you’ve had a lovely summer so far. I enjoy writing these status updates - month by month - as they give me an opportunity to reflect on what I’ve been doing… and aspiring to do.
Life
Summers are always a challenging time for work, with my little one on school holiday for 2 months. We spent the whole month of July in Italy at my parents’, two weeks in Brittany at my in-laws’, and now we’re back in Italy for another two weeks. Anything I am able to write, it’s thanks to my parents’ help with childcare. I’m infinitely grateful to them.
This issue of “What I’m up to” will cover: what I’ve been writing, reading and learning this summer.
Writing
I looked back at the first year of my blog series The Future is Federated - exploring Fediverse software and tools - and discussed what’s in store for year 2:
Elena Rossini
Earlier this month I wrote an essay titled: “In this age of technofeudalism every writer who covers technology - especially resistance to Big Tech - should disclose their tech stack. Here's mine.”
Elena Rossini
The impetus behind this essay was the disappointment I felt when I discovered that many writers and activists I admire, known for their criticism and resistance to Big Tech, are in fact using exclusively communication platforms owned by Big Tech oligarchs. And I think that their use is an implicit endorsement of these tools, with the message “there is no other way.” So I felt compelled to share the tech platforms and tools I use - and those that I am actively avoiding for ethical reasons. Spoiler alert: there IS another way.
I started applying the “POSSE” approach (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) for my series “my adventures in self-hosting: day _”, where I describe the progress I’m making - and the occasional fumbling - in my efforts to learn Linux and master self-hosting tools.
I’ve been publishing the posts on this Ghost blog, under the category “my so-called sudo life”:
Elena Rossini
Heads-up: these posts aren’t syndicated on the main site… but have their own custom RSS feed: https://news.elenarossini.com/tag/my-so-called-sudo-life/rss. I'm not sending them out as emails, but if this is something that interests you, let me know in the comments and I may set up a new newsletter for them.
Reading
I LOVED Robert Gehl’s book Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the fediverse and the struggle for democratic social media.
A synopsis from its website:
In his new book Move Slowly and Build Bridges, Robert W. Gehl tells the story of the activists, software developers, artists, and everyday people who have built the fediverse, a noncentralized alternative social media system. Unlike big tech corporations like Facebook, TikTok, or X, the fediverse is comprised of thousands of small, independent communities who use a Web protocol to communicate with one another.
I was already passionate about the fediverse before (duh) but while reading this book, my love for it grew a hundredfold. I delighted in seeing mentioned in the book many fediverse developers who have become friends in the past year and I have infinite admiration for them and their efforts in creating this alternative social media system. The stories told in Move Slowly and Build Bridges remind me of many tales in the vein of David vs. Goliath. I am more motivated than ever to contribute however I can to the sustainability of the fediverse.
I enjoyed Robert Gehl’s book so much that it was hard to pick something else as a follow up. I chose Yanis Varoufakis’s Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. From its page on bookshop.org:
Perhaps we were too distracted by the pandemic, or the endless financial crises, or the rise of TikTok. But under cover of them all, a new and more exploitative system has been taking hold. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech instead. With it they funded the construction of their private cloud fiefdoms and privatized the internet. Technofeudalism says Yanis Varoufakis, is the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and is the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself. […] Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.
Highly recommended too!
Learning
The blog and newsletter platform Ghost (which powers this site) announced the release of their version 6 on August 4th. I had been waiting for this day for months, as Ghost 6 promised to let self-hosted sites (like mine) turn on ActivityPub federation. What does this mean? A more direct access to readers, with the site gaining two-way interactions on the open social web. When a blog post is published, it appears directly in the social feed of its followers - wherever they are on the Fediverse - with comments syncing instantaneously between the open social web and the website's comments section.
I was honored beyond words to see my Mastodon avatar made a little cameo in the Ghost announcement banner… and in the blog post about the Changelog there was an embedded video showing interactions… which featured someone recommending my blog (this blog!) with Ghosts’ official account replying “great tip!”
John O’Nolan
Well, ActivityPub federation requires moving a Ghost-CLI installation to Docker. So, not so fast Ele!
I know absolutely nothing about Docker, this goes above and beyond my current (already very basic) programming skill set, so now I’m giving myself till December to learn Docker so I can move my site there. I’ve been getting an accelerated advanced education in Linux security, containers and the like.
In the past, before going to sleep, I would be checking the news or my RSS feed reader. Now I check technical documents and video tutorials about Docker. Whoever said that adults don’t change? I had the most radical transformation in the past nine months, since discovering the world of FOSS. Now the yearly event I really look forward to is FOSDEM, ha! It feels wonderful to have found a community of likeminded individuals with similar goals and values.
What’s Next
Admittedly I got completely sidetracked with the project of making a zine about the Fediverse. At this point I will pick it up in September.
What really excites me these days is learning more about Linux and Docker… it feels incredibly empowering to have a new skill set, especially in this domain, as technofeudalism takes hold everywhere. I’m hoping to pass on the knowledge of everything I’m learning to my little one… when the right time comes.
Thanks for being here,
Elena
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