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A new instance, a new location, a chance to start fresh with how we act and how we are.
The people who are following me can see up to 20 years of how I am, and the ones who really study know how different I can be.
I'd be interested in knowing what people would like to see out of me on here at textfiles@mastodon.social, my other account.
@textfiles I am so happy to see Jason Scott here! Jason is the only reason I still used Twitter (known here as #birdsite) since I moved to #Mastodon about 2 years ago.
Jason has done a ton of good work on almost all of my hobbies, especially those relating to #computing #history. He is an archivist, preservationist, and filmmaker, and just all-around interesting guy.
Let me make some introductions. 1/
@textfiles Back in the days of the #BBS - and it would take an entire thread to explain what that is to people younger than about 35 - people would mostly manually exchange files about things. These files were text, some well-written, some ignorant, some documentation, some junk... And Jason preserved them and put them online at http://textfiles.com/ . This history would have been lost had someone not done this. About 20 years ago, I ran a #Gopher mirror of the collection. 2/
@textfiles Then in 2005, Jason released his BBS Documentary. Although it did of course explain the technology, he noted something like "This isn't the about the BBS technology. This is the story of people that used BBSs." As I wrote at https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10385-really-enjoyed-jason-scotts-bbs-documentary , I really enjoyed it; I caught the tail end of the BBS era, being too young and too rural (that was a problem due to phone costs back then) to have been an earlier part of it. I learned a lot and watched it with my wife even. 3/
@textfiles Those two projects wound up forming the basis for a various research and other works, such as Kevin Driscoll's excellent book "Modem World", which I leared about in the article "The Internet Origin Story You Know Is Wrong" from https://www.wired.com/story/internet-origin-story-bbs/ . I wrote about it under the title "Lessons of Social Media from BBSs" at https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10393-lessons-of-social-media-from-bbss . 4/
@textfiles Then there is his documentary Get Lamp, about #InteractiveFiction (aka #TextAdventures). A more focused film, it also does a great job of capturing a culture that existed -- and exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lamp http://www.getlamp.com/ #getlamp
Also all these documentaries are licensed under a #CreativeCommons license and Jason encourages you to download them. 5/
@textfiles It is probably inevitable that Jason wound up working at #InternetArchive (archive.org). I also recently found his podcast, "Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It" and particularly enjoyed his episode about making his phone number publicly known on the Internet, and the calls he gets - sometimes people in real need of a kind ear, sometimes pranks. http://ascii.textfiles.com/podcast 6/
@textfiles@digipres.club Here on #Mastodon, I don't encourage people to "like and subscribe" or "#follow". I encourage people to *INTERACT*. My measure of enjoyment of the #Fediverse isn't my follower count; it's the kind of interactions I've had. (So all the new people that have followed me in the last week: tag me on a toot or reply to this and say hi!)
So, you can interact with Jason at @textfiles@digipres.club and @Textfiles@mastodon.social .
Now pardon me while I remove some #birdsite clients...
/end