Oddbean

I’m preparing my Nostriga talk, which includes a bit about the history of decentralized technology. One thought I had was that FidoNet and ActivityPub are essentially the same thing, but separated by a couple decades.

That's not wrong, at least to the extent I understand ActivityPub. In practice, FidoNet was pretty hierarchical, with echo posts and mail flowing down/up through hubs to nodes in a tree. At least, it was strongly that way in the US, thanks to long-distance rates. I've often compared nostr to UUUCP, which still had some hub-and-spoke tendencies, but which in my experience was a lot more mesh-like than Fido-technology networks. För context, I operated a BBS that was a hub for several Fido-type networks and a UUCP gateway from 1992 to 1998. Good times. 👍

Meh, not sure I would say that. So here's the deal. Two separate efforts, one more european, one more silicon valley. The first being RDF / Semantic Web / Linked Data. The second being Activity Streams 1.0. Neither really got the traction they wanted. So W3C made a WG for social with various technologies that were at a loose end. Activity Streams was translated to 2.0 lead by IBM and with a new JSON(-LD) format. ActivityPub was an evolutoin of the openmicroblogging, ostatus, webfinger, identica type thing. It also came into a linked data world, but not 100%. ActivityPub was based on LDP inbox, which was before it solid inbox, which before that was semantic inbox. Semantic inbox was simply the idea of doing email but with HTTP and rich data. ActivityPub added an outbox (which turned out to be critical as it validates data), followers and activity streams. Then Eugen came along and made a stunning interface which made it take off, before that there was very little traction. The link to FidoNet I think is a bit tenuous. It's 2 world coming together because they didnt do as well as they hoped, and then a viral implementaion came after.

Before the WG that made ActivityPub we had an XG for a few years. (2005-1010) This was the final report of the XG. WG was a bit after that and used the XG as an input. https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/wiki/FinalReport

If only I had more time to read everything I wanted to. Funny seeing Harry at the top of the document. He’ll be here in Riga. Definitely for honeybadger but I’m hoping he’ll come for some of Nostriga too

Woah! Someone who knows of Tom Jennings and FidoNet?! Wish I was there to hear it!!! BBS's are truly decentralized I feel, had a little convo with AI about it ironically and it showcased a very positive outcome for decentralization with BBS's over the centralized structure we have currently. Wishing your talk all the best in Riga and CANNOT wait to hear this one! https://highlighter.com/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqpuawfa7u0vqtcj8tzrpafxs9zewdgmcqhudk3dlspzmlyqqn9jsqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwpexjmtpdshxuet59uq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dxqezu7tpdd5ksmmwdejjucm0d5hsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyctwvshsq9tpgce9sa28ve2yc3ntd3kxu52xv9z4qs6pqs5900

Woah! Someone who knows of Tom Jennings and FidoNet?! Wish I was there to hear it!!! BBS's are truly decentralized I feel, had a little convo with AI about it ironically and it showcased a much more internet-aligned outcome with BBS's over the centralized structure we have currently. Wishing your talk all the best in Riga and CANNOT wait to hear this one! https://highlighter.com/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqpuawfa7u0vqtcj8tzrpafxs9zewdgmcqhudk3dlspzmlyqqn9jsqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwpexjmtpdshxuet59uq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dxqezu7tpdd5ksmmwdejjucm0d5hsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ehx7um5wghxyctwvshsq9tpgce9sa28ve2yc3ntd3kxu52xv9z4qs6pqs5900

Humankind constantly recreates the same things in all lifetimes … Nothing is new … knowledge is lost. Selfish gains instead of for all sentient beings has been the last 5000 years. Thank goodness mass enlightened people are uniting for goodness 🙏