Week 4: Computer Systems as Social Networks

Week 4 - Computer Systems as Social Networks”

Today:

  • discuss homework
    • Lee Felsenstein on Community Memory
    • Commerce Department virus email outage
    • Email is Making us Miserable
  • alternative protocols and specs
    • twtxt
    • html journal
    • gemini
  • webrings (using onionring)

Low Tech and Slow Tech

Low←Tech Magazine

Alternative Protocols and Social Media

twtxt

twtxt

Decentralized, minimalist microblogging for hackers

twtxt is a CLI tool, as well as a format specification for self-hosted flat file based microblogging.

documentation

HTML Journals

The Neon Kiosk is a virtual Kiosk located somewhere on Main Street, Nightfall City. The kiosk distributes HTML Journals. A journal is any HTML page that follows the little markup described on the HTML Journal site. The journal can be hosted anywhere! It can be on Neocities, ichi or even on your personal machine. It will work as long as it is reachable over the web. Journals don’t need to have their own dedicated page either: they can simply be updates on your homepage, that would work too.

The Kiosk simply scans all the journals once a day and produces a static file.

Neon Kiosk

spec

What is a spec?

A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specifications (specs), and the term is used differently in different technical contexts. They often refer to particular documents, and/or particular information within them. The word specification is broadly defined as “to state explicitly or in detail” or “to be specific”.

It is a common early part of engineering design and product development processes in many fields.

Gemini Protocol

Geminiprotocol.net

Gemini is a new internet technology supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents. That’s not a new idea, but it’s not old fashioned either. It’s timeless, and deserves tools which treat it as a first class concept, not a vestigial corner case. Gemini isn’t about innovation or disruption, it’s about providing some respite for those who feel the internet has been disrupted enough already. We’re not out to change the world or destroy other technologies. We are out to build a lightweight online space where documents are just documents, in the interests of every reader’s privacy, attention and bandwidth.

Gemini Quickstart

Gemini FAQ

Gemini Proxy on portal.mozz.us

Lagrange GUI clientfor Mac, PC, Linux

Elaho on iOS

GemiNaut for Windows

Buran for Android

Amfora CLI client

There are dozens more gemini clients on the Awesome Gemini list

Building our webring

Add ourselves to the webring

Please add the onionring code to your now page that you previously uploaded. It’s probably best to place this before the closing </body> tag.

Do you have a good workflow? Set up a system for yourself to easily upload updated pages to your server space.

The code to embed for our webring is here. Add to your now page or whatever page you want people to be brought to via the webring. Note: I set this previously based on what page you linked to from Moodle for homework.

	  <!-- START webring embed code -->
		<div id="social">
			<script
				type="text/javascript"
				src="/lee.tusman/assets/js/onionring-variables.js"
			></script>
			<script
				type="text/javascript"
				src="/lee.tusman/assets/js/onionring-widget.js"
			></script>
		</div>
	  <!-- END webring embed code -->

Directories: How Do They Work?

Reminders:

  • a directory is another name for a folder
  • If you put an index.html file inside a folder, you don’t have to specify the index.html page in the URL address to get to it.

For example:

If you have a folder on your student server space called “projects” and you put an index.html inside there then your URL would be:

https://students.purchase.edu/firstname.lastname/projects

Read