Intention not tech

Because Manu is right – asynchronous conversations that take place over a few days really are fun – I thought I’d reply to On the indie web… again via this site.

(Perhaps we might provide readers a few minutes’ diversion fitting the original post, its responses and shifting subject into place. It is at the very least different to a Twitter conversation.)

Thanks to Colin, James and Manu, I’ve changed the way I think about indieweb. Indieweb isn’t a set of protocols (although as Colin argued it is often presented in that way), it’s intention and action – posting to your own site or responding to someone else in a considered way. With my tech head on I can say it’s fun wrangling with webmentions, static comments and APIs, and thinking about platforms, but that’s not the point of all this.

We shouldn’t be trying to recreate social media and its various mechanisms.

What struck me most about the whole thing – nearly made me laugh out loud – is I found out about Manu’s posts because he emailed me. Consider the sheer amount of time and effort we put into automating and, to a degree, dehumanising this basic interaction, when sending a short email is so much more efficient and friendly.