Frogs, Bicycles and Mastodon
You will be familiar with the idea that the difference between a frog and a bicycle is that a competent engineer can disassemble a bicycle and rebuild it – possibly improving it in the process. The attempt to do that with a frog leads to catastrophic collapse of the frog, Failure to observe that fundamental distinction between bicycles and frogs is a category error with significant consequences, not least for the frog.
That brings us to the elongated muskrat and Twitter. The muskrat appears to have fallen into that same category error and the jury is out on whether or not the platform is going to be launched into eternity (or close it’s eyes to subluminary objects, as the old broadside accounts of hangings had it) along with the frog. Complex systems under stress can collapse beyond the point of recovery very quickly, even if their central nervous systems leave them twitching for some time afterwards. Is this the case with Twitter? Quite possibly.
Anyway, like an awful lot of other people, I have also opened an account at Mastodon, just in case. If you are at all inclined to look for me, I am here: @cosmic_serf@mastadonapp.uk.
So far, Mastodon has been interesting, mostly in a positive way. The server(s) are currently struggling with latency and capacity issues because of the sheer number of people who have joined, but beyond that I have some concerns.
I’ve been around the internet long enough to remember when it wasn’t at all clear that Mosaic and Gopher would work. Many of the ideals that framed those early days fell by the wayside as the whole thing was commercialised and monetised. Where the ideals survive is in the open-source scene from which Mastodon emerged, and in the attitudes of old-timers like me. I would like Mastodon to succeed, but the idea that Mastodon is not like other sites because *waves hands in vague fashion* is wrong. It may have been true a fortnight ago, but it isn’t now because new users are importing learned behaviour from Twitter. When ideals meet humans, ideals always suffer.
As with any new place, there is a learning curve, and part of that is to control the timeline to see only what I want to see – or, more precisely, to not see what I don’t want to see. I figured out how to do that with Twitter and Facebook, but have still to do the work with Mastodon.
Why bother? Well, it all comes down to two reasons: (i) at its best social media is genuinely social, fun and informative in exactly the same way as a night at the pub; (ii) out of sociability and engagement arises the potential to make people aware of my writing without spamming them.
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