#[tantek]aaronpk is right that the current diagram shape and layers imply an ordering / ranking of sorts which has become counterproductive, even if the intent was to provide a purely historical expected propagation ordering (which has largely held true, though perhaps has also been limiting).
#Loqi[aaronpk] The problem with generations is it's an ordering, and in reality there isn't an order and people don't try to move "up" the ordering, and often people exist in multiple of the categories at the same time.
#[tantek]GWG, that's point of good graphic design, to communicate the concepts and intent you want, without misconveying what you don't want
#[tantek]its non trivial, asking "a pie" about info comms is sorta like asking, then how do you drive, just press the gas pedal?
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#[tantek]it's* (speaking of non-trivial, and fighting auto-correct)
#GWG[tantek]: Either way, I think it may be a bigger group to discuss that than myself.
#[tantek]I believe /generations was intended to be a fairly literal time-based metaphor, not one on ranking or any sort of judgment
#[tantek]IndieWebCamp did literally start with "development leaders", and grew quickly within a few years to incorporate "journalists and bloggers" which is when this diagram was made, 2014
#[tantek]"personal domains managed by third parties" grew a bunch in 2016 as we setup a bunch of folks with github pages which barely counts as "managed by third parties", and I'd say we've finally started to reach actual "personal domains managed by third parties" in 2018 with micro.blog managing people's personal domains with zero-config indieweb capable services!
#[tantek]"people using social networks" could be considered to include Mastodon, as each instance is essentially a "social network" in itself. fed.bridgy, Known, WordPress support has helped to build that bridge, but it's still a bit shaky and not fully reliable, bi-directional (aaronpk's personal implementation being a notable exception)
#[tantek]Thus I believe /generations has served its purpose, it helped illuminate the history up to that point (2014), and accurately predicted the spread and growth in two more stages, 2016, and 2018.
#[jgmac1106]Keeps reminding me I want to add "teaching with images" to my classes it is really hard to tell stories in 2-d images but when you do it conveys meaning so well
#[tantek]We can declare victory with the original thinking / prediction / model of /generations, call it complete, and now re-think more broadly about the next phases of iteration, evolution, growth
#[tantek][jgmac1106] "teaching with images" is quite powerful, I'd love every wiki page to have an explanatory diagram, no matter how simple
#[tantek]in particular, those of you that weighed in previously, aaronpk, jacky, kevinmarks, kartikprabhu, grantcodes
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#[tantek]aaronpk - do you mean my summary of where /generations started and where it is today is a good framing?
#[tantek]I'm likely going to speak to this at Beyond Tellerand Düsseldorf, so I'd definitely appreciate any criticism in advance
#[tantek]more importantly, I want to help develop a replacement for /generations that speaks to the next 4+ years at least. Beyond that seem more difficult to predict.
#[jgmac1106]made sense, for me I would have just like to frame it around versioning software and not people, might have meant to be time based, but got picked up to categorize people
#[jgmac1106]the problem is the literal definiton on the page refers to groups of people and not an evolution of time...though a timeline like view may be a good reframing
#[tantek]it was supposed to represent the flow of time, from top to bottom, with a broadening set of participants as time proceeded.
#[jgmac1106]what if was similar to versioning "The first generation of indieweb tools will best serve people who can buils a CMS, the next generation of tools would serve people comfortable with a shared host, etc
#[jgmac1106]somethbut not even generation..that word just makes you feel like you get stuck in a bracket
#[tantek]I think versioning (any kind of numbers) will inevitably lead to people comparing/ranking each other, according to what "version" of software, and that's unhealthy
#[jgmac1106]yeah had same thought..don't want to interupt your Black Panther...that could be where the idea comes from
#[tantek]this is my point about /generations has served its purpose, it has successfully finished doing so, and now it is time for a new model
#[jgmac1106]total creative freedom with constraint of purpose and message, go for it!
#[tantek]as long as you keep using the language of "generation" you will be drawn back into that framing and thinking
#[jgmac1106]I meant more conceptuall models of growth from research...pictures to look at...this is a fun puzzle
#[jgmac1106]the tech evolves, the community evolves, the learner grows, all need to be represented
#[jgmac1106]and each evolution introduces new sets of challenges which may case greater adaptation and factors to evolve....now I need to hike...finally going snow..habve a purpose for the snow shoes tomorrow
#[jgmac1106]could Innovation be the metaphor? Technology innovations, community innovations, personal innovations..starting to sound a lot like Actor Theory now...okay time to call it quits before I stay up till 4 in the morning playing with metaphors
#[tantek]I wonder if any of these folks developed their ideas on the web
#[jgmac1106]jackjamieson..not vetted, just finding them...this idea of "systems innovations" seems to be new in the sociotechnical systems literature
#[jgmac1106]I will ask the XMCA listserv tomorrow as well...they may know of people doing this work..want to look at some "third space" literature
#[jackjamieson]I don’t read a lot that’s explicitly about growth, but maybe a couple related concepts…
#[jgmac1106]not sure tantek isn't my field but seems like we aren't only one's looking to replace generations as a metaphor
#[jgmac1106][jackjamieson] doesn't have to be about growth..thats my teacher bias shining through, have complete freedom to rething gernaertions model;
#[jgmac1106]so now we all have to go read: G. Lakoff & M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1980)
#[jackjamieson]First, the history of technological diffusion is filled with examples of well-meaning westerners trying to convince people in developing countries to use western technologies. And it rarely works out because there’s an implicit bias that the western technology is newer and better, but in fact it often has a poor fit with local needs
#[jackjamieson]I don’t think anyone here intends that attitude, but the generations metaphor has a risk of coming across like generation 1 bestows their advanced knowledge onto their juniors. I haven’t been following this whole discussion about generations, but that’s my understanding of the problem
#[jackjamieson]To that effect, Lilly Irani has done some great work trying to decenter assumptions about computing
#[jgmac1106]yes, what was supposed to be a description of where the technology was and the intended audience at a given time became to be understood as a way to quantify skills of people
#[jgmac1106]plus...it comes of elitist...generation 1 best talking to generation 2...they would have no idea how to talk to a generation 4 person about DNS...
#[jgmac1106]dead link do you have title....have you seen my work on how HTML/CSS first approach best for decolonizing OER?
#[jackjamieson]Basically, they identify examples where local computing cultures are conventionally understood as inferior, and explain how those ‘inferior’ models are often actually very well suited to a local contexts
#[jackjamieson]I haven’t seen that HTML/CSS work - can you send?
#[jackjamieson]Applied to /generations, the lesson I would take from post-colonial computing is to look closely at how and why those subsequent generations do things the way they do. IndieWeb’s ethos of UX before plumbing does this, but it doesn’t come across in the generations model
#[jackjamieson]That was a long way of saying I agree that the generations metaphor has some problems 🙂
#[jackjamieson]So, from that perspective, the one-way diffusion of /generations 1>2>3>4 could be a stumbling block, so I imagine post-colonial computing would suggest a metaphor in which diffusion flows in all directions
#[jgmac1106]yes the bidirectional is key, as new groups bring new skill sets and expanded use introduces new problems!
#[jgmac1106]I have sketches where I have an equal size triangle on the other side trying to represent this...couldn't put it into words, clarified it for me....as you said new solutions
#[jgmac1106]anyways I will persue the learning sciences over next few days, with a focus on CHART and Actor Theory, looking at these models..you know the STS literature way better than me
#[jgmac1106]Schmarty knows somebody who studies HCI, he might be able to ask for insight
#[jackjamieson]Sounds good, I’ll be away from IRC most of the weekend but I’ll be thinking about this
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#[jackjamieson]Maybe useful, Irani and Silberman’s Turkopticon project reflects some of these ideas — a service through which Amazon Mechanical Turk workers can post reviews of requesters: https://turkopticon.ucsd.edu/
#[jackjamieson]And they’ve reflected on some of the challenges of maintaining Turkopticon - Irani, L. C., & Silberman, M. S. (2016). Stories We Tell About Labor: Turkopticon and the Trouble with “Design.” In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 4573–4586). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858592
#Loqi[[tantek]] this is my point about /generations has served its purpose, it has successfully finished doing so, and now it is time for a new model
#[tantek]I prefer that framing, rather than the implicit assumptions that we must stick with /generations until proven otherwise, and thus obviously point out its problems with where we're at (that line of reasoning is a bit of an implied strawman, so I'm going to choose to reject it)
#[jackjamieson][tantek] I agree with that assessment. The generations concept did help me to situate myself when I first learned about IndieWeb, but I think an open re-analysis can be helpful
#[tantek]I literally think we can consider /generations done and successful for its purposes, and must rethink our next forecasting / growth model
#[jackjamieson]I think I might be retreading past discussions that I missed, but (1) What purpose was achieved with generations, and (2) What would be the different purpose of a new /growth model?
#Loqi[[tantek]] I believe /generations was intended to be a fairly literal time-based metaphor, not one on ranking or any sort of judgment
#[jackjamieson]Got it, I’d been looking at /generations and thinking of all the work left to be done, but if there’s been implementations at every generation, that provides a good foundation for a fresh analysis
#[tantek]exactly. we've filled it out. checked it off.
#[jackjamieson]But to pile on a bit more, the first thing I did when I first read /generations was try to place myself (as maybe a gen 1.5), then implicitly track my “progress” as my skills improved. Pretty much the opposite of what was intended!
#[jackjamieson]Which I think was probably because I felt like I was an outsider becoming an IndieWeb person, so latched on to a convenient metric
#[tantek]yes /generations worked well to help new folks enter, but not as a place to look at iteratively one you had "joined" the community (that was never the intent)
#[tantek]IndieMark serves more of that kind of purpose though it too needs updating to reflect present feature patterns (doesn't really need a reframing though, the way /generations does)
#[jackjamieson]I don’t know if that’s a common experience or just mine. In my case I feel like I had to learn a lot of technical skills to be able to achieve what I wanted, so I first looked at /generations aspirationally. So even thought that wasn’t what was intended, it was actually useful in my case
#aaronpkI've been trying to find examples in other unrelated communities and industries. I don't have a lot of well formed thoughts but here are some places I'm looking for analogies:
#aaronpkpeople who develop standards like USB, which result in people who build hardware that has USB connectors, and people who plug a USB drive into their computers
#jackyhmm that's really a diverse and yet connected set of people
#aaronpkthere's no assumption that you need to learn the USB spec to use a USB device
#aaronpkand there's no implicit or explicit ranking of the people in those groups
#jackyHm. This is more deep than I though. It seems kind of wrong to even try to group everyone in one thing - they inherently aren't interested in the same things.
#jackySome people are focused on performance, some are focused on having their desk lamps working
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#[tantek]The web is not like hardware though. The web put all sorts of things in reach of people who weren't used to having them within reach.
#[tantek]there are people who develop crypto for TLS, there are people who implement TLS, there are people who issue certificates, there are web developers that setup HTTPS, there are users that use HTTPS secured websites.
#[tantek]though even that separation of people who work on / with TLS/HTTPS had flaws in deployment (still has some), and needed something like LetsEncrypt to make it more suitable/usable across those different sets of folks
#aaronpkHardware is quickly becoming more accessible too tho.
#aaronpkAlso I don't think that just because the web is different that these analogies don't apply anyway
#[tantek]the big difference is tinkerability. the web, HTML, CSS, JS is far more tinkerable / hackable than hardware
#aaronpkfor most people getting involved in a web standards organization is still way out of reach or not even something they know is a thing that is possible
#[tantek]that increased tinkerability greatly broadens the set of people who can & do, and share
#jackybecause in the case of hardware and the Web, those both are true and yet not true (more supposed complexity to setting up Websites as well as building hardware)
#[tantek]web standards are produced MUCH more openly and accessibly than hardware like USB
#aaronpkif you want to go build a usb device and learn that spec and build some hardware there are lots of resources to do that now
#aaronpkim not sure "much" is a good characterization
#[tantek]not nearly comparable to the resources to do so with web pages
#aaronpkit's only "much" more accessible if you already know the industry
#jackyI think the fact that there's different thoughts on it here shows how its a personal visibility thing
#[tantek]nah, start at Wikipedia, see how fast you can sign-up for a w3c mailing list vs join USB
#aaronpk[tantek]: you're starting with the assumption that someone already knows it's even a possibility that they *can* join a W3C mailing list or even knows what that is
#jackyor if people would use Wikipedia as a beginning point
#[tantek]no, I'm saying start for the wikipedia page for a technology, try to discover who maintains it, and try to discover how to participate
#[tantek]one big difference is access to "creation", e.g. # of people that can open a text editor and create HTML vs. go even find a kit to hack on USB
#[tantek]it would be amazing if people could create new USB devices as easy as creating new HTML documents
#[tantek]I'm willing to be the difference is 1000x or 100000x
#[tantek]very different group/market/community dynamics at those differences in numbers
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#[tantek]I'm also not sure how useful technical building block analogies are to this vs. say, an "indie website" with domain and say a "phone" with phone number.
#[tantek]btw aaronpk, I would say that web standards *are* still too difficult to participate in
#[tantek]where was that tweet about wanting a indieweb site solution that was more like an iPhone than Android?
#[tantek]that's the analogy that's useful to explore
#@EricaJoyin talking about this w/ @cap, i realized what i’m looking for. i want the iphone of self hosted blogging software: simple, intuitive, beautiful, & just works. i do not want the android of blogging software: can be great if you fiddle the right bits & find the right theme, etc. (twitter.com/_/status/1101361880180830208)
#@EricaJoydo i have to put my writing back on my website now? is there a self hosted alternative to wordpress that's pretty (well designed), feature rich, and easy to use? (twitter.com/_/status/1101204810290745345)
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#jackyyeah that + her being in the tech eng space; everyone's going to throw solutions that involve the terminal in some shape or way
#[jgmac1106]!tell eddie this snow storm may mess up my availability next weekend, basketball game got delayed, need my son to lose so they don't make championships next week..if they win will be out some on Saturday or Sunday
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#[schmarty]Good morning meta! I missed some discussion last night re: web vs USB!
#[jgmac1106]adafruit...maybe that is the example it is hackable hardware
#[schmarty]There's a lot that can be done before you need to get manufacturer and device IDs, which is the major reason I can think of that you'd need to join any org related to it
#[jgmac1106]Ir was a food discussion but I think I fall in the usb metaphor doesn't work for the web in the context, close and useful....
#[schmarty]Adafruit and others sell many devices that are designed to let you "do things" over USB, because USB defines lots of profiles out of the box
#[jgmac1106][jackjamieson] discussion about the need fro bi-direction in any conceptual model was my big take away
#[schmarty]Keyboard emulation, disk drive emulation, midi and other event-driven systems that work over USB
#[schmarty]I am saying it maps better than the discussion above would suggest
#[jgmac1106]i meant the entire maker hacker ethos...in terms of using a hardware metaphor rather than the USB drive as the metaphor
#[schmarty]I don't think anyone brought up a USB drive as a metaphor
#[jgmac1106]yes that was the discussion, nobody brought up USB as hardware
#[jgmac1106]it was usb users are like gen3/4 it just works, they will never want to build a usb
#[schmarty]But USB as a standard thing that has connected groups whose focus are each very different
#[jgmac1106]I was tired I may have missed context, it cut across channels
#[jgmac1106]once any metaphor gets to standards the conversation becomes more literal and the metaphor loses its power
#[schmarty]Standards groups exist for USB, yes. But there are also lots of manufacturers that build from scratch on what those groups publish. And some parts of USB are so common they become programmable by people who aren't conscious of the specs. And any of those devices might be in the hands of a consumer who just wants to plug it in and use it.
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#[jgmac1106]!tell gRegorLove I added an idea for a session "make a weebly microformats template" looking at the mustache partials I think it is doable...Bring a lot of churches to IndieWeb with Weebly, teachers too
#[jgmac1106][tantek] [jackjamieson] this seems like a good starting point as well Nardi, Bonnie (1995). Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction
#[jgmac1106]basic flow chart of event organizing, not bidrectiona;;
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#[jackjamieson]I did some reading about activity theory last summer. Tantek is right that it’s often abstract, so there’s some work required to apply it to IndieWeb
#[jackjamieson]Some useful threads though. e.g. Activity-centred computing vs. application-centred computing. Principles like UX-first and plurality speak to IndieWeb’s activity focused design, since the idea is to facilitate activities rather than get users to conform to a given toolset
#ZegnatIsn’t that kinda what we already tell people to do? Make what you need, and UX > formats?
#Loqi[eddie]: dougbeal left you a message 1 day, 11 hours ago: The daily end times put event duration at 18 hours for IWC Online
#Loqi[eddie]: [jgmac1106] left you a message 3 hours, 16 minutes ago: this snow storm may mess up my availability next weekend, basketball game got delayed, need my son to lose so they don't make championships next week..if they win will be out some on Saturday or Sunday
#[jackjamieson]But the fact that IndieWeb demonstrates those principles already suggests that activity theory could be used to formalize a model describing IndieWeb. Of great academic interest, and hopefully could identify patterns or recommendations with more practical application
#[jackjamieson]More immediately useful, the fact that IndieWeb happens to follow parts of activity theory already, means other parts of the theory might be useful as well. If I find any useful connections I’ll write up a blog post
#[jgmac1106]eddie entire tournament got scheduled today, may just miss demos as their could be team party if they win, that is all. didyou see I sent out a 7 day countdown for Onlien post?
#[jgmac1106]jackjamieson yes activity theory so broad it captures all but I like the focus on bidirectional interaction between community, norms, tools, agent, and outcome...
#[schmarty]lol well i just pulled a jgmac1106 regarding attending HWC NHV. looks like i won't be able to sit with you to do glitch projects that weekend after all
#[schmarty]i have an improv class sat, another sunday, and tickets to a show saturday night.
#@artlung↩️ It's a measure of what the web means to me that while my mother was at the end of her life I was choosing to use the #indieweb to share her life and comfort myself. That's the web. It is a bulwark to share ourselves. And to remember. (twitter.com/_/status/1101905639696084992)
#[jgmac1106]this is a model I developed to study spaces similar to #indieweb share to try to show other multidirectional models. It begins with self, as in your domain, and moves out to everyone as in W3C standards, doesn't account for evolution of technology
#[tantek]Ugh I feel like I now need to invest an hour replying to tweets in that thread correcting misconceptions -- all those folks I know in person and have for 10+ years!
#LoqiTo read or reading is the act of viewing and interpreting posts or other documents; on the IndieWeb, a read post expresses that something has been read, like a book or section thereof https://indieweb.org/read