I did it! I set up a private calibre server for my ebooks on my digital ocean droplet. I had to do lots of fucking with my server and ports and all that jazz, and boy howdy have I really learned a lot and become more comfortable working directly on the server.
But also, why did I do this? Like, my idea was to make a little free digital library for friends to easily grab books and junk, but I also I wanna keep it behind a password, so that adds some hassle and like. Managing the metadata for the books on the server currently sucks! And I haven’t worked out the kinks yet in auto-adding books to the library when I add the files to a designated folder in my Nextcloud!
But also, even if this ends up going nowhere because it’s not a good solution for also a problem that doesn’t exist, I’m still really proud! I learned a lot! And that’s neat.
Hello and welcome to another installment of “Gen shares quotes from a rad thing they read,” this time with an article from 2015 called “Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse“. A coworker shared this in our work slack, and it’s 100% my shit right now, and feels even more relevant now than it did in 2015. It’s a solid read, especially for people who are involved in making websites. I’m also including some screenshots because the design of this piece is also just excellent.
Content on the web is not king. Half the time it’s barely the jester. Unless created by an individual or one of the dwindling sources of legitimate journalism, it’s rarely produced for noble intentions like education or entertainment. … There’s a lot of writing happening, but so little of it has any substance. Superficial content is cheap. It’s outsourced to content farms and social media consultants. We hire interns, students or project managers to “maintain the blog.” Publications have reduced the number of in-house staff and rely on armies of underpaid freelancers who have no budget or support for investigation, research, or anything more than a shallow thought.
So much of our best independent writing is contributing to a single monolithic platform under the pretence of convenience, distribution, and freedom.
Call me naïve, but I refuse to sit back and let our digital culture fade to corporate beige. That’s not a digital world I want to be a part of, and I’m going to fight every step of the way to fuck up the plan. I believe there’s an opportunity for those of us who are willing to stick our necks out. Nothing makes a drop of colour brighter than when it’s set against a wall of grey.
Designing from the heart of our messages out means we fully acknowledge that they will not speak the same way to every person. We’re no longer chasing numbers. Instead, we’re thinking about how we should treat each piece of content, designing to reflect its subtle personality. The content should speak to the few people who can identify with this personality because this is the only audience that matters. No machine will ever A/B test its way to a more meaningful relationship.
Just came across this manifesto from DissidentKitty@radical.town and some parts of this really resonate with me:
[Y]ou cannot, in good conscience, support a transhumanist ideology that challenges the very idea of humanity, while holding onto such outdated and conservative ideas like binary sex and gender.
Anarchists, who seek to abolish all systems of control and oppression, should pour their effort into the fight for trans rights, for the system of binary sex and gender roles are the oldest and most evil of these institutions.
Humanity had always coexisted and coevolved with technologies: the idea that we’ll be able to stop doing so is not only foolish, it’s inherently transphobic and ableist.
So long as centralized power exists in the form of state or capital, technological progress will always serve as a tool of oppression and exploitation for the establishment first and foremost, before it eventually trickles down to the masses…if ever. The kind of technological wonder promised by transhumanism is nothing short of nightmarish for the people if wielded by an authoritarian establishment.
This reminds me, in parts, of the Xenofeminist Manifesto, which I think I should reread soon.
