Re: <nettime> Moving Nettime to the Fediverse

[Jean-Noël Montagné <jnm@autistici.org>]

Changing the system is a political choice. Any technology is politic. 
Moving from email technology to web technology is a real politic affair 
which contradicts the common ideas deployed in this list. Freedom to 
publish, freedom to communicate. Equality.

I receive and read Nettime in a separate custom folder, in plain text, 
with my choosen font family made for a good reading. I can concentrate 
on the contents only, and not be disturbed by any other web tech on the 
page. I have all my received and sent emails on my Thunderbird since my 
second mail account in 1996. When I search something in the posts, I 
have the result in a matter of seconds. With a good plugin, I could 
classify the posts by keywords if I wanted to. I could use very clever 
text analysis tools on all contents. I can automatically translate the 
contents with the adapted plugin. I can automatically arrange the post 
in conversations, and print or export the total content of a 
conversation. I can forward some post to someone in a second. I can 
forward it encrypted for someone in a dictatorial country in a second. I 
can BCC my posts to other folks not subscribing to the list. My posts 
can be automatically corrected like into a text editor (not the case 
today...). I can automatically (POP3) download my emails when I have 
connectivity, and read them, or compose answers when I don't have 
connectivity in the middle of my desert.
No other technology can concentrate so usefull management of words and 
knowledge.

All this can be done without any tracking technology: pixel, cookie or 
other big brother tech related to a html content on a web server running 
a fediverse service.

Plus, Mail servers can run on the resilient Guifi.net or Freifunk.org or 
other independant/resilient/low-cost/self-managed alternative networks, 
with very low bandwith, and very light server distribution running on 3 
watts-consuming servers. We need to preserve this low-tech possibility, 
because in the next decennies, the avaibility of energy, freedom of 
speech, free networks, data centers, large bandwith, is not guaranteed 
at all.

At the opposite, any fediverse service can only run on a more complex 
server, because it's distributing all sort of media and web 
technologies. It's more deeply linked to the hardware and software 
industry, and their updates, to the political nature of networks through 
their technologies, to the threats to freedom of speech, to the business 
aspect of networks. It's more deeply linked to the Gafam Batx 
colonialisms which invades all HTML pages including fediverse services, 
because it's so easy to embbed a tracking tech or an advertising in any 
HTML document. The same for tracking techs created by intelligence 
services, through geolocation and other meta data. It's also so easy to 
add an advertising near a fediverse service frame. Don't forget that our 
political future is moving to techno/eco/dictatorship. The smallest 
metadatas we release, the better.

I am not opposed to fediverse technologies. I use them. But Nettime 
survives, in good health, because of the email technology. The medium is 
the message. Going to web technologies would sign its death.

JN

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