First post on the github blog
19 May 2013
I am migrating away from google+; my stuff is now here
I have a script that helps in migrating a google+ based blog to github blog that is based on textile:
I did not like the latest google+ redesign; also there are some posts that the google masters classified as ‘in violation of their terms of use’ whatever that means; as for me that violated my terms of use, so now I am moving.
Also this social network thing is increasingly about control of the customers information diet / information bubble. This functionality includes an element of filtering: the system does not want you to be overwhelmed by/spammed with frequent posts, so it filters the information and shows you a subset of the postings. How is this filter implemented? Is it keyword based, is there a bias against certain keywords? Filtering is a close relative of censorship; many aspects of those social networks are not very transparent, and I suspect that those aspects will be subject to abuse in the near future.
The old internet (Wordpress blogs/RSS/lack of a controller that records the social graph) is less centralized, and better for freedom.
Maybe its all part of a wider pattern; Once upon a time computing was centralized, and the mainframe ruled. Then came the PC and everybody would have a computer in his home, people would invent new applications for the computer, and these in turn would enable people with more knowledge and means to exchange information; Nowadays computing is moving back to the cloud; the cloud resembles the the mainframe in many aspects; The mainframe invented virtualization with VM/CMS,VM/ESA; now the cloud is using virtual machines to isolate processing within the cloud. Half of the mainframe is about fault tolerance and high availability, so is the cloud. Now with this higher centralization of computing we are increasingly dependent on the benevolence of the rulers;
But things may change again; hardware changes, software changes too. People forget the old ways and new ones are created. Nothing is fixed.