[00:00:00] Katherine Druckman: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Reality 2.0, I'm Katherine Druckman. Today. I am talking to Doc Searls. He is back from his conference and we are very happy to have him back. And we also have Shawn powers [00:00:12] Shawn Powers: from last week. Right? [00:00:13] Katherine Druckman: I know we were just here, but it's great. It's always We forgot to [00:00:18] Doc Searls: unlock the [00:00:20] Katherine Druckman: back door. He hasn't had [00:00:23] Doc Searls: anything to eat? [00:00:25] Katherine Druckman: Yeah, we got to feed them and water. Yeah. So, so we're going to revisit, last week's episode, really, because it's a kind of a hot topic. Our listeners seem pretty interested. We got some email about it. We got, you know, we've got a lot of feedback on. Hey Mastodon. So, um, so yeah, so we're going to, we're going to revisit the topic, but with Doc this time, because Doc always has some really great ideas and thoughts on different things. Um, but it's, it's been an interesting week since, since we talked last. There was a great mass joining of various Mastodon instances. And there's been a lot of activity, a lot of people introducing themselves, there have been a lot of, sort of tagging of various interests and people just really kind of going all in, on creating kind of a new community for themselves because they rejected the idea of Twitter being sold and whether or not you think that's a good idea Mastadon potentially has value to you. Especially if you're listening to this show. But, yeah, so, so it's been an interesting week. I've seen a tremendous amount of activity just generally, not just, you know, interacting with me or the podcasts, but all, all around Fosstadon is a good example, Fosstadon has seen, you know, a huge influx of new people, which is nice to see. But yeah. So, uh, so what do y'all think that's, what's the deal with Mastodon? [00:01:45] Doc Searls: Well, uh, so, um, I'm going to speak completely through a hat I'm not even wearing, which is. I really want to listen to the show you guys did last week, but I haven't had a chance yet. So I'm in the dark. And as I was saying before we started the show, I, um, I was a very, very, very early mastered in user. And I can't find any, I can't find where it was with it. I gave up on it for whatever reason, I think because the, you know, the, the readers were elsewhere. Basically for me. I couldn't, I couldn't get the action up. Um, So I want to get back into it. I mean, and here's an interesting thing. I'll just bring up by w because I w is a hugely leveraged conference that we put on, uh, twice a year and we cap it at 250 people. We had to turn away a lot of people actually. And though it's a paid conference, it's cheapest paid, goes as three full days, but lots of stuff came out of there. There's a auth, which is login with whatever, which did, we didn't mean it to be that. Open ID everything Microsoft is doing with identity. Um, good and bad, but mostly good at this point, um, came out of there at least directly or indirectly. And there was a lot of action talking about Mastin and last week, mostly because people are sort of being scared back into the open world from whatever they imagine. Uh, Elon Musk is going to do my own imagination. He's just going to troll the crap out of the thing and not buy it. Or does he have it now? I don't think he has it yet. Does he? I don't know. I don't know. There [00:03:20] Shawn Powers: was some weird stuff I'm like, [00:03:22] Doc Searls: this is like one of the most important things for knowing stuff. Right. Because what do we know about news? We don't go to CBS, NBC CNN. You know, if we're looking at video. We go to Twitter. Twitter is anybody who cares about news. We'll go to Twitter for that. Right? Every newscaster has their little at handle on there. We put people's at handles on. It's incredibly important. And nobody knows whether this, whether this dude has bought the thing yet or not. It's sort of interesting to me this isn't [00:03:52] Katherine Druckman: a done deal. I don't, I mean, there, there, there are a lot of hoops you have to go through to take a public company private and, and you've gotta, you know, line up the investment there. I saw another thing. [00:04:04] Shawn Powers: You have to like, look, get a loan based on leveraged shares from, [00:04:09] Doc Searls: it was a thousand points today. Like, oh [00:04:13] Katherine Druckman: my God, I can't. I mean, I'll never retire. It's totally fine., [00:04:17] Shawn Powers: I do have to say the dock that people are going to suspect, like I slipped you a 20 under the table to say that you couldn't remember where your Mastodon account was. Because last week my whole premise was, I don't know where to sign up. How do I know what Kellogg server to use? [00:04:33] Katherine Druckman: So, well that's Hey, so not to completely go off on a tangent, but did you settle on anything? Are you going to use one of your domains or I'm probably [00:04:40] Shawn Powers: going to use one of my domains and I'm my data. My micro data center is not quite set up yet. Um, and so, but that's probably what will happen [00:04:48] Doc Searls: when you use one of your domains. What will. New URL for your mastered and B? [00:04:56] Shawn Powers: Well, I have several domains, but it's probably going to be shaun@nerdlings.net. like@seanatnerdlings.net will probably be it. Or maybe Sean Powers with the zero for the, oh yeah. [00:05:07] Doc Searls: You do not have to have to, you don't have to have the word mastered and in there. Oh, no, not at all because it's not an essential server. Okay. So, so for example, I own. Um, spider. [00:05:23] Shawn Powers: God, you would have to run a server running Mastodon and keep it updated on. [00:05:30] Doc Searls: I have to geek up a master and server on somebody's cloud because I'm not going to fool with it. [00:05:34] Katherine Druckman: You can do it on. So yeah, that's the trade-off you can have complete full control, host your own, you know, even, you know, locally like Sean, like a very cool person or, um, you know, on a virtual server, but you can also do there's. There are a few companies who do manage to manage Mastodon. [00:05:52] Doc Searls: I, so I have managed hosting for dot com. I have managed hosting for my ma my mail server was like, our mail is@rackspacesearles.com. The website is at one-on-one or whatever it's called now. Um, and I, and I got to build from each of them. They're both pretty cheap as it goes like 10 bucks a month. So, um, so one of those might actually. In the same way they will host WordPress blogs. Right. They would host a masculine, [00:06:24] Katherine Druckman: not [00:06:24] Shawn Powers: necessarily [00:06:27] Katherine Druckman: because, well, because of the resources involved. And I think, um, I, I'm not actually sure. I think you need. It may not run on just a generic, you know, shared hosting or you're going to have a little bit, it's more resource intensive. As I understand it, I've tried to host it [00:06:45] Shawn Powers: as far as I know, there's DNS settings that need to be specified, which could be done at most hosts. But then, I mean, there's, you know, there's like a, my SQL database. There's a redness database. There's, there's a whole bunch of moving parts that work together to do the Mastodon server, the web front end, the Federation services that communicate with the underlying. Pretty robust system, but I mean, there are some hosting platforms, like Catherine said, I mean, you, you can't pay somebody to host that. I, I think you can use your own custom domains if they host it. Yeah. [00:07:17] Katherine Druckman: There was like [00:07:21] Doc Searls: crisis started six pounds a month. So you'd sit in the UK, I guess. Um, so that's Masto hosts. That's not bad. That's cheaper than I'm paying right now. For hosting my own. Yeah. Yeah. I don't [00:07:35] Shawn Powers: know though, if it, if you get your own domain there or if you get like a sub domain of [00:07:39] Doc Searls: probably do. Okay. So I don't, I [00:07:41] Shawn Powers: don't know. I mean, it wouldn't cost them any extra just to let you point your domain [00:07:44] Doc Searls: there. So yeah, it's just a direct, okay. [00:07:48] Katherine Druckman: I think you can use your own. I, I actually thought, you know, maybe that's something we could do, we should do for the podcast. Maybe we need, you know, I mastered on incidents at reality, tickets.com. Why not? You know, um, [00:07:59] Doc Searls: or, or we could actually. Uh, frozen mastered them to come in, [00:08:05] Katherine Druckman: or we can [00:08:06] Doc Searls: just do that or some other extinct species to come in and help us out. [00:08:11] Shawn Powers: I was, I said, no, last week I had, I still own penguin journal.com. We can, oh, [00:08:16] Doc Searls: really? I gave up so many. I had, I have bull forge, which I really liked as a name, but I never could do anything with it. Um, I had half a cat. That's something. And that came from early on at Linux journal. When like in the late nineties, we had fudges making up completely strange names for, for, for, uh, domain names and a bunch of them got taken, but I got half the cat. You mentioned the logo, is it like just a half a cat right there? You know, there's a logo. [00:08:59] Katherine Druckman: So, um, you know, I wanted to also mention, I didn't actually do the full spiel before, when we came in, we started and I did most of it, you know, I, I just didn't, I didn't think, you know, the people you finish that [00:09:12] Doc Searls: you just run the music until now, and then. [00:09:16] Katherine Druckman: We're having too much fun this week, but yeah, I, I normally thank people for, contributing, uh, Patreon and Ko-fi, and then for sending us emails or, you know, people doing quite a lot, but this time we got a, a little tech tip and I wanted to. Um, we got a tech tip on via Mastodon, which was very cool. And, and that is so, so, okay. Backing up a little bit. We talked last week about, um, the idea of identity verification and the fact that you can host your own. You can host a Mastodon instance on your own domain that people know already. People may know me and trust that Katherine druckman.com. Um, and therefore, if I were to host a Mastodon instance with my own domain name, they know it's me. It's I don't need a blue check mark, but you, there is another thing you can do. And that is, if you link back with a REL equals me attribute to your master. Profile, you also can get a little sort of a, the equivalent value of a verified profile, and that is verified URL. So for example, on my personal Mastodon profile, I have a little green check and a little green box that appears around my personal domain name. So it says Catherine druckman.com. So if you trust to Catherine Catherine druckman.com is me. Then you can see that this is definitely my verified. Mastodon account because, and that's what the one on labor. Social. Um, yeah. So you put it in. If you go to Katherine druckman.com. Now, I guess everyone's going to do that while they're listening. Catherine druckman.com. You go to the bottom and I have a little link to my Mastodon profile. It's kind of hidden because I quickly added it and I didn't find a master on icons. If you look [00:11:08] Shawn Powers: at it. Okay. I spelled out just kidding. I didn't spell it. [00:11:13] Katherine Druckman: Yes, I see it. Yeah. So the heart link, um, it has a rel me attribute in that anchor tag, so that, [00:11:21] Doc Searls: uh, behavior, so I'm at Katherine druckman.com. Go to the heart at the bottom, [00:11:26] Katherine Druckman: kind of the heart at the very bottom. And if you look at that link, it has a equals me attribute and that lets the Mastodon profile, know that it's really you. And if you look at my, uh, Libra one profile, which is, social dot Libra one, I think, um, at Catherine D at. And this is a whole other conversation. It kind of gets confusing. Right? I can never remember if it's social social dot librem one or just librem one. So anyway, but my a Mastodon profile we'll have a little green box around my personal URL. [00:12:05] Shawn Powers: And so you just on your main, like, [00:12:11] Katherine Druckman: Right. Or is this the point where we've lost you? And you're like, man, this is complicated. And it was actually easier to get the blue check. [00:12:19] Shawn Powers: Yeah. I'm just being snobby. I look, I have a blue check mark. Now what I don't understand is why does it, I mean, what does, did you list Katherine druckman.com in your profile or something? So that's the two-step process. It has to be at the root level. [00:12:38] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. So if you lift that domain, it will go ping the domain and it will see that you have a link back to your profile on it. And therefore it gives you the green. Yup. Okay. [00:12:49] Shawn Powers: MI, although your link on me is not HTTPS. Oddly enough, it's just TTP, but still apparently work because you are a green check marked. [00:13:05] Doc Searls: So I'm already lost. So let me find myself here. So I see a check. Okay. I'm looking at, there is pie. There's this little square of a podcast. Reality to kiss me and Catherine Darkman. You're talking right now about me or me means, is that what that is? Yeah. Yeah. [00:13:23] Katherine Druckman: And so it means basically, yeah. So if you linked to your own site and then you put that attribute linking back to it, it, this, this information is, is on the edit profile screen too. It's actually, there's a little message telling you, Hey, if you want to verify this link. You can, uh, you know, put this attribute in, it says verification, you can verify yourself as the owner of the links in your profile. None of the data for that website must contain and link back to your message and on profile [00:13:50] Shawn Powers: and is the reason it's not working on the reality to cast because you don't have a MI link. Yeah, [00:13:57] Katherine Druckman: that's probably right. Let's see. Hey, we can fix it. Live on the air, talk amongst yourselves. [00:14:04] Doc Searls: So if I want to, okay. At the top, it has the login or register. What would I be registering in on your site? Or all of mass had been, or neither or both? I know the answer [00:14:16] Shawn Powers: to that. Tell me you would be signing up for a Mastodon account on this particular instance. And I don't know which site you're on, whether you're on the Libra one site or on the Linux rocks.online site. [00:14:31] Doc Searls: Okay. [00:14:32] Shawn Powers: So you would be signing up for. Uh, a Mastodon account on their instance. Now you could use that account and anybody on any instance would be able to see your stuff because the Federation, but your, your handle or your whatever, I'm sure it has a name, your, your tusk. I don't even know what, uh, it would be, uh, you know, like DeSales or dark circles at least. So, [00:15:05] Katherine Druckman: yup. So that, so that's, you know, that struggle. I think a lot of people have, and that's when you interact with people, you, you need to use their phones. Um, no, they're full, it's like an email. [00:15:17] Shawn Powers: I'm sure that's not the name of it, [00:15:19] Katherine Druckman: but, and when you go to somebody's profile on a different server than your own, so I'm, let's say I'm using my Liebrum one account and I go to follow. Your twit that TV, I believe you have a free account. If I go to your actual profile page and I say, follow then there's this weird little pop-up thing and it, and it makes you say, okay, which instance are you following this from? And it's this extra layer of clunkiness. We actually talked about this a little bit when we talked to James Walker and I think it's those things that have limited adoption and they seem very small. You know, if you were a tech savvy person, You know, you're going to go, like, what's the big deal, but it just, it, but at the same time, a lot of people, you know, are turned off by the tiniest bit of clunky user experience. [00:16:07] Doc Searls: It's learning to drive a stick. I mean, that's what it is, you know, we're saying, you know, Oh, I just need to do these three things in the command line. Uh, okay. You lost [00:16:18] Katherine Druckman: a lot of people. Big deal. It's write a bad script. Stand on your, on your head and say a chant. It's all. No big deal. [00:16:25] Doc Searls: Yeah. When I started Linux journal and I didn't know shit, one of the friends that was actually in Seattle when we had an office and everything, it was like, I remember I was trying to do something on this machine. I said, you didn't look at the bug list. You didn't read the man pages and I'm thinking. What are main pages? I didn't, I didn't even know. I mean, I didn't even know. And it's like that. I mean, it, this isn't quite that far down, but it does, it has a, it has some conditionalities to it. It's like two or three layers of conditionalities and conditionalities or deal-breakers for a lot of people. And yet everybody learns the type Cordy and everybody learns how to type on glass and, you know, These things can be surmounted if people are motivated and the trick is to get everybody motivated [00:17:09] Katherine Druckman: and it turns out Elon Musk is a motivator. I [00:17:12] Doc Searls: guess he's a motive is really great. It's just like the great for vog who is 90 foot head is coming up over the horizon. You know, when he was just like a rich troll, you know, in a certain way, also credit, where do, I mean, he does get us into space and stuff like that. it was a completely irrelevant thing. We go back to the right topic. He has eight kids. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. It's been busy. Yeah. [00:17:42] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he does a lot of really innovative stuff. I mean, he's the, guy's an innovator he's sees the space. X is very cool stuff. This, you know, the battery and solar power, a lot of really good star link. I mean, you know yeah. The tunnel under San Antonio, but then yeah, I [00:18:00] Shawn Powers: mean, this is an audio podcast, but behind me is one of his flame throwers from the boring. Yeah. [00:18:06] Katherine Druckman: You know, we're, we're secret Elon Musk fans. We just acknowledge that, um, maybe not everyone is and caused him a bit of an Exodus [00:18:17] Doc Searls: 30 miles that way. And it nobody's looking, but I, you know, but you guys could see me, the rest of the world can, but 30 miles, that way is Vandenberg space force base from which a lot of the startling things take off. You could watch the rocket go up and then you watch the first stage, come off and go back to earth and land on a 40 foot square platform floating into Pacific on its ass, standing up. That is amazing. [00:18:47] Katherine Druckman: How does amazing. So, so there's something that I am, I actually had this conversation recently, so you can't. You can't be two different people. Right? Elon Musk is a single human being. He is a whole person, you know, warts at all. And, you know, on one hand, he's this great innovator doing great work that, you know, helps humanity in lots of ways, but on the other, he's still a billionaire who can just go buy a major communications platform. And those are all a part of who he is. Right. And, and, uh, you can't, and I understand that people. I have trouble with sort of excusing behavior that they disagree with, you know, just because he does all these great things now, you know, at the same time, I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe the Twitter thing, isn't a deal breaker for you. You know, I don't know. It's a complicated thing. How people feel. Yeah about the, I think it's a, it makes people feel vulnerable. And that's the heart of the issue. Where, where, when you go to something like a Mastodon instance, you, you feel a little bit more in control of your own destiny. And when somebody can just swoop in and buy this major platform, it makes you feel like very small. I think that's the root of the issue, but yeah. Anyway, [00:20:06] Shawn Powers: I really like the, that on technology. There are, yeah, there are, there's a couple of things that would make it smoother. And I don't know, I don't know how to make those things happen. You know, like the whole instance in your address includes, you know, a specific, uh, incidents that you're a part of. If you're, depending on the reason you're on Twitter, you know, if you want to follow famous people or you want to follow large companies, or you want to, you know, I don't, I don't think a lot of those people are gonna move. So I think that Mastodon may be the new place for some of what people use Twitter for, but I don't think it's going to necessarily, you know, I think there is a, what's the opposite of exit. Oh, [00:20:49] Katherine Druckman: I'm in flux [00:20:50] Shawn Powers: in. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to make up a word, but it, it felt too. So, uh, the, the mass influx to Mastodon, I don't think is an equal Exodus from Twitter. No, you know, I think it's a one more thing. Unfortunately. [00:21:06] Katherine Druckman: It's not going to replace Twitter. What it feels like. Is the early days of Twitter when it was just some geeks kind of experimenting with a new communication platform and people compared it to, you know, again, remember we mentioned last week, there was the main feed. Imagine that today, right? Impossible. Yeah, I [00:21:22] Shawn Powers: can talk. So doctor you remember Twitter when Twitter was young? One of the tabs was the homescreen where every tweet that anybody was doing was just scrolling by. And you could, I mean, it went fast, but you could see [00:21:34] Doc Searls: them. So, so let me tell you my Twitter story, how early this was for me, there was a company called Odo that was run by a bunch of guys, including Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, biz stuff. Somebody else. Um, and Odo was, uh, something or other and they had a, and F was showing me Odo. I don't even remember Odo was an aside thing they had was this short way that you could do something like texting called Twitter. And it just happened to be there. It was like this gravy on the other thing they were doing, you know? And when it also remember about F at that time was. They were struggling. You know what I mean? If they had nothing, they had this little startup that they, they were a bunch of guys are just doing it over again. You know, he had, um, um, what was the blood platform that, that Google bought? Cause they, uh, block space, blog, whatever. Anyway, blogger, blogger, blogger. Um, they actually bought the parent company of blogger and they brought in all those people that worked for blogger, you know, worked there. That was so close to not making it blogger itself. It was like running on some servers and it was a garage or something, you know, and he was really afraid. Like, I don't want to let all these people down, Google bought them and, you know, took care of that. But then they just took what little money they had, I think. And they made Odo. And Twitter was like this other thing that happened, you know, it's like lightning strikes and you never know, you know, and I remember [00:23:10] Shawn Powers: for years there was no monetization. Like nobody knew how they were going to make money. [00:23:14] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. And then re and it actually asked the question, what are you doing right now? Funny thing. Well, the idea was that it was a stream of people's messenger statuses, like status [00:23:26] Doc Searls: messages. So here's some credit and discredit where do Twitter was plagued by the fail whale. Remember the failed whale. I got a [00:23:38] Shawn Powers: job as the documents. Was it, the fail whale got a new job as the Docker mascot. [00:23:45] Doc Searls: Right. There you go. In the meantime credit, where do, how often did Facebook fail? Like twice in the whole history. There were a couple of big failures now in that, but they have bigger infrastructure. They did more and they didn't crash because they hired all those people from Google. I probably, you know, they had a big, you know, raid going on, but yeah, so I'm just giving Facebook a little bit of crap. And Twitter. Got it together. They haven't, they haven't crashed in a, okay. [00:24:13] Shawn Powers: So can, can mast it on be another popular, successful? Uh, I don't even know if alternative is the right word, because, I mean, for example, Instagram is not that drastically different from. Twitter, except that it's, you know, every post has to have a photo, but I don't know that that's enough to explain how much of a dominant social, you know, platform it is. It is mastered on like the, maybe going to become what Twitter wanted to be originally. Like Catherine said, like a stream of just, you know, peoples chatting where, you know, that's where you go for conversation and Twitter is where you go for consuming more data. I don't even know. I I'm wondering if they can live happily together. [00:25:07] Doc Searls: I have two theories in that. I think Mastin is perfect for community. I think it's perfect for communities of confined spaces and that they can be federated is a real, huge advantage. And once they take off, it could easily be like the better next door, like the non-toxic next door, because each master then probably will have some, at least informal vernacular rules for engagement we're in this neighborhood, watch we're in this, you know, where the fire department, whatever else. Where you have a kind of community of interests and they develop a little commons. That's my fantasy for it. I think may I ask that it has the chance to be that? Um, so that's a, B is I think some things can only be done by giants and I, this is like one of the big, horrible and awful, but really true lessons of web two O which is you need big cloud and big management. And. Expensive servers in data centers to do a lot of stuff. And, um, and people like some centralization, they like going. And I like the sense that there is a place. There's a place called Facebook. There's a place called Twitter. There's a place called Instagram and you're there. And you know, the rest of that group is there, but that world is there and it's good for that. But I also think that. Making communities is we're really at the start stage of that. We've tried several times before. We've always tried to do it in a centralized way. I think the federated way that Mastodon is doing it is extraordinarily promising. If there's a kind of a critical mass of, of this word of mouth, about adoption, where I didn't want to do a Facebook group, we did a mastermind group instead. Why? Well, it's not on Facebook and we, we were much, we have much better governance. Because it's just us and we know each other, you know, it's a community, that's my hope for it. And I say this as somebody who's not yet a user. And maybe next week when I am a real user, I'll say, you know, everything I said last week on the show was bullshit. You know, so I don't know, but that's my fantasy. [00:27:20] Katherine Druckman: I like it, I have actually noticed, um, Mastodon sort of becoming the nature of the Federation is such that each server or instance can have its own identity. Right. So it kind of becomes a little, uh, community within a community. Most people will have a feed of from their own Mastodon instance. Right. And then they'll have a they'll maybe have a federated feed from the, from the larger. From a larger group, but, um, but yeah, they kind of become, I don't know these mini communities, so I think that, yeah, [00:27:53] Shawn Powers: and you have to pick one, maybe that's maybe that's my big complaint. Maybe that's the solution to my. Concerns, maybe there needs to be a way to have accounts on multiple instances. You know, I am part of multiple communities, you know, some geographic communities, some, uh, interest based communities, if there was a central way. Tie them together. And maybe it's a client that I can decide, like, is this a, you know, a global toot where I, you know, put it out to all of the instances or am I just tooting at this particular instance? And anytime anybody. To me. I, is that the, is that the terminology? Am I using? I feel ridiculous saying. Okay. Um, so if somebody toots at me from any instance, I get that at my central locale. And maybe that's just a client. Maybe, maybe all I need to do is develop an app that supports lots of. Um, you know, accounts at multiple instances and smoothly integrates them together. So you can follow me on any of them. And, and it's me all the time, because I see any reference to me from any instance, and maybe, maybe the apps do that. Maybe that's already, maybe I just need to do that. And, uh, because I mean, apps support, multiple instance, multiple accounts, maybe they do work together in that smooth the way that I'm imagining. [00:29:22] Katherine Druckman: Um, I haven't noticed that, but it isn't easy to manage multiple accounts from one, uh, from the, like the, the Mastodon actual native app on that. [00:29:31] Shawn Powers: Oh yeah. You, you actually did multiple accounts because you have the reality to cast and the, and yours, but yeah, I don't know. There's just some global integration. It would make sense to me, but I wouldn't want to lose track of one. Right. I would want any, I would want like a combined feed of all the stuff so I could see them all. And then if I reply to somebody, it replies on the instance that they, you know, tooted at me from [00:30:00] Katherine Druckman: so. Master and on making twelve-year-olds of this whole. [00:30:06] Doc Searls: So here's a question let's say, let's say somebody, um, uh, wants to start a, an antiques obsessive. Uh, I'm trying to think of something would be a community. Um, and maybe we should make a geographical list. Let's say, um, Uh, well, let's just say antiques collectible. Cause I that's one of the things that seems to be a thing in, in Bloomington Indiana, where we I'm usually am right now. Um, so, so let's say somebody starts Bloomington antiques as a, that in group and everybody can participate in that. Well, yeah, like, and it's okay. Well that would be, that's what you would call it. Well, if [00:30:54] Shawn Powers: they like hosted it, so it would be like w Bloomington or I don't remember what the name of the town, Lisbon Bloomington antiques or Bloomington antiques.online or [00:31:04] Doc Searls: something. Yeah. Uh, I mean, yeah, it would be, it would be one of the masters and things. Okay. And, um, uh, my, uh, my computer went into a thing, so, um, But it's, uh, you know, it's at, um, that's I dunno, uh, I think to be anything.org, let's say, but would, and people are writing there. They're talking to each other there. And is this, is this find-able by Google. In other words, if I want to search and I run it, will I run across that? Or is it going to be private in a set by nature where you have to be a member in order to do something in order to talk. So, I don't know this incident, so I don't think, [00:31:51] Shawn Powers: I think the answer of course is depends. I don't know that Google is going to index Mastodon servers. I don't know if public tutes are, I mean, they're, they're public, right? Because I mean, like I'm not logged in. And I just went to the reality to casts page on linux.online, and I can see those. So, um, I, I guess, you know, it could be indexed by Google. But, you know, it's probably one of those just like any other website, right. Do you have, do have tell Google chamber, like, and they [00:32:24] Katherine Druckman: used it, remember when Google used to index Twitter and they don't anymore. They don't. Okay. [00:32:30] Doc Searls: I think [00:32:32] Katherine Druckman: I used to be able to search Twitter from Google and I don't, I confession, I haven't used Google in a very long time. [00:32:38] Doc Searls: I just searched that duck, duck go for Catherine Druckman and Masterton and, um, I'm not seeing that domain up high. Okay. Um, is that maybe if I go get more results, I'm not seeing [00:32:58] Shawn Powers: it. It would be on the Lieberman [00:32:59] Doc Searls: site. Well, I'm right now, I'm actually thinking of, um, uh, of I'm looking at, you know yeah. Libra mind. I'm looking at the liberal one, run one. Um, So I'm not seeing it. And I could add a few things like, let's see, let me try to end a prime bastard and privacy. [00:33:22] Katherine Druckman: Well, yeah. Okay. So that's so they do, yeah. Google, I'm sorry. Google does index people's profiles, but do they index the individual tweets? Maybe they do. And I, [00:33:34] Doc Searls: yeah, I think they do. I think I've found tweets that way, but, um, Now I have to add that Google used to index pretty much everything and I've found there lot. There's less of my old stuff. That's disappeared off Google because they're not page rank is no longer about inbound links. It's now about currency and popularity and shit like that. It's better than something else. [00:34:00] Katherine Druckman: Yeah. They tell the individual tweets are I completely take it back. Individual tastes are index interesting. There was something different. There, there used to be like a separate, dedicated Twitter. I can't remember what there used to be, where Twitter was featured more prominently. But, um, now I can't, I really liked, [00:34:18] Doc Searls: by the way, we don't know the answers to things. And most part, most podcasts you bring in the authority who has like a different. Clear answer, you know, um, you know, here's the abortion debate. Does life begin with birth or does life begin with conception? Here's conception over here is birth over here, big arguments of both sides. Um, but we actually don't know what we're talking about entirely. No, we're talking about, we don't have enough knowledge to fully back it up [00:34:47] Katherine Druckman: this episode aside, I do think, I think are general. With reality to cats reality, 2.0, I think our general theme is raising complicated questions. This one, maybe not so much, you know, mastered on versus Twitter is not that complicated a conversation. However, you know, we, we, we always raise more questions than we answered. You know, that's our thing. That's what that's on. That's our charm. [00:35:14] Doc Searls: Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's a conversation, you know, people who don't, who know a lot, but not enough, you know, and [00:35:21] Katherine Druckman: that's how we ever find the answers. And that's, we [00:35:22] Shawn Powers: talked through the problem. I mean, when we invite Kyle, [00:35:26] Doc Searls: he knows everything. He knows all that, you know, we, as soon as we bring in our own men tat to work it up, We, we, we need our muscle to who's that I guess, as you Catherine. Yeah, [00:35:46] Katherine Druckman: well, we've had fun. Have we covered? And we covered Mastodon. We've covered the mysteries of Mastodon. [00:35:52] Doc Searls: It's something I have to say. I, um, I almost never get jet lagged in my body. Like my body adjust very quickly to what. Whatever times I'm in, but I screw up other things like, like, I think of this show as starting at the end of the day, right? Not at three o'clock right. Or at two o'clock. I think it would starting as like four or five hours, you know? Cause I'm on east coast time. My head's on east coast time and like I thought my, I just went, I had an appointment at the apple store today and, and it was at, I guess, I dunno, is it an hour and a half ago? But I actually thought it was a late in the day. Cause I made the appointment in Indiana, not in California, so, and I'll never fix this. [00:36:43] Shawn Powers: We should just, maybe we should just switch to flat earth because it make the time zones a lot easier. Let's just, uh, and if you join that team does I'll do all those, uh, scheduling conflicts go away. [00:36:55] Doc Searls: Yeah, I, well, no, yes, no, they don't, but I, it just makes it worse, but in a more interesting way, I think, I think, I think, you know, you could take the sundial approach, you know, we'll meet when the sun is straight overhead or we'll meet at sunset or some other thing like that, that way you, you can, you can look at the clock in the sky and know what it is. Unless of course it's cloudy. [00:37:21] Katherine Druckman: I did. Um, I do want to mention. I neglected to mention that the. Mastodon tip about profile verification was brought to us by our, uh, follower named Chris. I, I don't want to completely read out his account name because yeah. But thank you, Chris, for, for alerting us to that ability. If you'd like [00:37:51] Shawn Powers: to thank Chris, here's his home address [00:37:54] Katherine Druckman: and telephone number and social security number. I don't know if you even American. He's not, but that's. Yeah. Anyway. Well, thank [00:38:02] Shawn Powers: you, Chris. And that's cool too. And uh, oh, I see it now says me. So did we get. Did we get the magical green check [00:38:10] Katherine Druckman: mark yet? I think it didn't. I don't know. I think it did it wrong. We'll have to fix it. [00:38:15] Shawn Powers: Did you click on the link after making the change? I [00:38:18] Katherine Druckman: don't know what, I don't know what it takes. My other one was pretty instantaneous. Maybe Linux rocks online. Just doesn't do it. Oh, that's true. It does. No, it says it does. Oh no. I'll I'll play with it later. [00:38:31] Shawn Powers: You can play me. [00:38:35] Katherine Druckman: So, yeah, join, join, join us on Mastodon. I think we've said our account name so many times that surely people can find out Sean still [00:38:42] Shawn Powers: doesn't have one or he has five and he doesn't know what, [00:38:45] Katherine Druckman: right. Yeah. But by the time somebody is listening to this a month from now, [00:38:49] Shawn Powers: you're going to happen, [00:38:52] Katherine Druckman: but they'll come to reality to cast and they'll find the episode and in the notes because I can edit them after the fact. See. Yeah. So stay tuned. Keep, keep visiting. Keep refreshing that page until we update it with Shawn's accountant duration. [00:39:08] Shawn Powers: Oh man. Yeah, I do have several accounts out there. I just, I don't even know how to get to them. I'm such a bad technologist. [00:39:16] Katherine Druckman: No, there's no such thing. What's a bad technologist anyway. [00:39:21] Doc Searls: That's a cartoon right there, a bed technologists. that's your next comment? And it's just, yeah, I'm a bad [00:39:28] Shawn Powers: technologist. [00:39:31] Doc Searls: Well, the answer is only [00:39:34] Shawn Powers: right. Oh, today. So today's comic blue and yellow are talking to each other. Uh, cup and string telephone. So, I mean, that's pretty [00:39:43] Doc Searls: low-tech yeah. Those are like, have you ever actually tried that by the way? Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. Like I have hanging out there cause I used to do the radio DX thing, a copper wire, a copper wire with, uh, between two tin cans is pretty good. That's pretty good. But it still sounds awful. And just like in your listen to. That's cool. And there's actually no point other than that was cool. One time. Right? That's [00:40:14] Shawn Powers: pretty much what the conversation of my comic was today. Can you hear me? Isn't that cool. And then yellow says, yeah, that was cool. But no, we are not getting rid of our cell phones and just getting cups. [00:40:23] Doc Searls: Right, right. I know. I need my slab. I need my rectangle rectangular life. We're all in rectangle. [00:40:34] Katherine Druckman: So I'm going to borrow a question from that other podcast you can occasionally catch us on, which is floss weekly. Um, and is there anything we didn't cover? [00:40:43] Doc Searls: Oh, right. I'm sure there's an infinite about we didn't cover. Well, here's something that is interesting to me at this stage, which is, you know, at what point, oh, here, here, here it is. You know if like I do photography and I reached a point today where the upgrades that were automatic, as least as I understand it, I may be wrong, but the point will be okay. Even if I am wrong upgrades to both old and current versions of Adobe Photoshop. No longer worked with an older piece of software that I utterly depend on to do photography that's don't ever supported. So, um, and, and, and it had to do with Adobe RA, um, uh, wrote out OB Robert reading raw files from Sony cameras. I have a new Sony camera. It's actually 10 years old, but. And it produces a raw file with the suffix dot ARW. So here's the thing in order to do this right, to make everything work, I'm really going to have to get a new laptop to get one that does what I want is going to be really $6,000. It's going to be like the top apple thing. I can't do it with the Linux thing goes there. I'm sorry. But the surface overs I'm stuck in. Appleville sorry, then expanse. I just am so. I have to operate in that universe and I'm actually thinking, am I done? I'm literally, am I done with photography? Now, what I should do is use the tools I have do the processing and everything I've already shot and stop because it's too expensive. I mean, and also because here's an interesting thing, all the camera shops are closing up because everybody has a camera on a phone now. So really apple and Google run photography at this. It's not Nikon and Canon and Sony and Fuji. Those are all in the pro area. So it's kind of like, if you want to do the pro thing, you're really laying out a lot of money. And then on top of all of that, it's all gotta be on drives. And how long do they last? Because how long are the file formats go to last and those things. And then people will say, well, put it on a cloud while you stop paying your rent on a cloud and it's gone. Right. So, and how long has your disc drive going to last? If you're just saving it off on a disc drive that nobody's going to use in 10 years. And is it going to start just the thought, I mean, we're where this is. There's this curve that goes up in what you spend in order to stay in a field and at a certain point it breaks, or I think it breaks, I [00:43:39] Shawn Powers: guess I do have an answer for you doc. Would you get more joy out of continuing [00:43:46] Doc Searls: or, oh yeah, for sure. [00:43:49] Shawn Powers: If you can afford [00:43:50] Doc Searls: it, then do it. Yeah. And that's where I am with it. The answer is, yeah. But it's going to cost me probably what it would cost me to buy a car, you know, which is which I didn't have to do anyway. But I mean, it's going to be that I will, I will make that purchase, but there's still. I know at least two photographers who have simply dropped out because they're, they got priced out. They're just priced out. They're done. They're actually done. So, so that's just interesting to me that we're we're at this, but this is not something with a real easy answer. It it's, it's digital existence. It's a side to digital existence where certain specialties are going to cost a lot and everything is. You know, I mean, we've, we've always had this distinction in the digital world about volatile memory and non-volatile right. So, you know, a random access, in some cases we have no way of looking at it. But, um, so I'm just thinking on this stuff. Yeah. Archival [00:44:55] Shawn Powers: storage is a big issue because there's no, there's no permanent digital archival store. [00:45:02] Doc Searls: No, [00:45:03] Shawn Powers: there's various levels of, of long-term. And I feel like this is another whole podcast, [00:45:08] Doc Searls: but yeah, it is. We'll make that about next week, you know, and see when doc has all, [00:45:14] Katherine Druckman: when we think about, I don't know, I say go back to film, just go back. [00:45:19] Doc Searls: And he knew back you by today. Just so you know, we'll come in on July 6th, it'll start being available on July 6th. And I know the apple store in. Santa Monica or Venice beach or something told a friend of mine there that they're totally slammed right now. Cause everybody's repairing their old computers while they wait for new ones. [00:45:39] Katherine Druckman: Oh wow. Is this the chip shortage thing? I assume that applies to [00:45:42] Doc Searls: all chip manufacturers of being at war with China. Yeah. Yeah. [00:45:49] Katherine Druckman: Um, yeah. Huh. Okay. Well, I was just thinking, as you were talking about photography, that I, when I was in college, I took photography with a camera that was older than me. My, it was my parents, um, you know, old school cannon, fully manual everything. And that it's never had the felt replaced to make sure it was still. You could, but it was never going to break. I mean, it was nothing [00:46:16] Doc Searls: to break, right? Yeah. They didn't have this split image. You find her where you would focus with a split image, then any in lined up the split. [00:46:25] Katherine Druckman: I think it might have weight. I, that sounds familiar. I mean, it had the little [00:46:31] Doc Searls: circle in the middle, in the [00:46:32] Katherine Druckman: yes. Yes. [00:46:33] Doc Searls: I had that. Yeah, we, that there was a split image viewfinder before, [00:46:39] Katherine Druckman: again, older than me. Jeff TB. I think that was right. [00:46:45] Shawn Powers: I'm curious. Um, if anybody's still listening at this point, there are people who listen to our podcast. Um, I'm curious if people like the. Less structured. Do you like it when we just our friends talking. Yeah. Right. I wonder if that's an enjoyable, listen, if you're still listening, please let us know if this is the kind of you enjoy this. Not every, not [00:47:12] Doc Searls: every week. [00:47:13] Katherine Druckman: And if you, if you made it this far and you don't enjoy it, um, I kind of wonder why. Yeah, please feel free to let us know that as well. I wish that y'all would stop earlier, but for some reason I couldn't reach the button to turn you off. [00:47:31] Shawn Powers: I was in the bathtub and the phone was across the room and Siri wouldn't listen [00:47:37] Katherine Druckman: to funny [00:47:39] Shawn Powers: cause yeah, I'm curious. So because honestly the other alternative was, you know, like I, maybe we don't do an episode this week and that sucks. Right? I mean, it's funny. Um, get together and talk and yeah, I mean, [00:47:51] Katherine Druckman: we could have had a more structured. Sometimes we do these when it's just kind of more laid back and the alternative would have been, um, discussed, you know, we do the, the format where we discuss articles. I actually really enjoyed those two, but you know, I, I enjoy it all. I mean, I'm here for the conversations. [00:48:09] Shawn Powers: Oh, that was the thing I wasn't saying like, Hey, maybe we should change formats where we don't ever prepare. [00:48:12] Katherine Druckman: No, I know. I see what you mean, but I don't think we would. I mean, I hope [00:48:18] Doc Searls: that as we start and we start, we start. There there's. Um, uh, but I I'm thinking, like I listened to, it's interesting. I mean, the farther we get into pandemic and war, uh, the more I want to listen to sports, uh, just to get away from it all. And so, and I'm a big basketball fan, so I listened to a number of basketball podcasts and they're out. Some of them are over an hour long and way over an hour long. And most of it's just conversation for the most part. It's just conversation, but it's among people who know their stuff. But they don't know everything because it's sports, you know, there are things happen and we're kind of in a sport here only as many sports were having. I mean, mastered in self as the sport nerd sport sports tune in now for nerd sports, there probably is a nerd sports already. Yeah. Yeah, video. [00:49:12] Shawn Powers: Yeah. That's the Mastodon instance. I'm on Sean and nerd sports doc. Now I'm not, please don't go there. It's probably a porn site. [00:49:22] Katherine Druckman: I hope not we'll find out. Okay. Well, cool. I think we've covered it. [00:49:37] Doc Searls: yeah, our chat it's there. That's the nerd sports get shit. Okay. Well, [00:49:43] Katherine Druckman: there's our link for a reading list. [00:49:47] Doc Searls: It's a t-shirt place. That's good. [00:49:50] Katherine Druckman: Well, thank you everyone. If you've made it this far, I commend you send us an email, let us know your thoughts and I will. Give you a gold star. I don't know. I have, I'll have to think about what, you know, how I'm going to figure that out, but [00:50:04] Doc Searls: you know, virtual gold star and they [00:50:06] Shawn Powers: have a gold star, [00:50:09] Katherine Druckman: but come back, come back next week because we may or may not have another exciting guest. In addition to Sean Powers, we may, uh, w I can guarantee you, we will have a good time and we'll probably talk about something interesting. So there it is. That's [00:50:23] Shawn Powers: a pretty safe bet.