The way we treat places and how we feel about them explains a lot about how we interact with each other in different kinds of real-life communities and on the internet. The kind of place we're in and our associations with it provide context and influence our behavior. Social media is upside down. For the benefit of social media companies, the user is the central object, and there is only one "place", which is the social media site. (Facebook, twitter, tik-tok, whatever). This is upside down. If I fire up my computer or phone, I want to go to a *place* and see what's happening. Going to "Facebook" with the entire world trying to talk to me is contrary to human nature. It's more natural for a human to go to a specific place with human character. I can go to the starbucks down the block with my favortite barista, Steve, who knows just how I like my coffee. I can go to the library, where I know the librarian at the reference desk and she always says hi when I walk by. Lots of these places have people I know and bulletin boards where they can post news, and people I can talk to (if I want to). Lots of them have things I can spend my money on. Some of the places have games I can play. Human social instincts are evolved to deal with situations like that. People have different behavior instincts depending on where they physically are at that moment. Work, home, friend's house, stranger's house, etc. The experience of a place is diverse in form, but limited in scope. There could be a combination of: chatting, watching people, reading flyers on the wall, reading common books or magazines, games, food, etc. But limited in the range of people you will meet because of real life, and limited in the theme of activities because the place has a purpose. A place will have regulars and visitors and newbies. (A newbie is someone who is thinking about returning, a visitor is someone who is planning to just drop in quickly and leave). The idea of a place aligns more with social media groups, except groups are too open. People see stuff from a group without needing "visit" the group. A "place" will have a human context (as opposed to a [[Machine Context]]). It's natural for participants to go to the place to see what's there before they interact with what's there. It's unnatural to see snippets from all your favorite places mixed together. (The other obvious problem with groups is that the social media sites tend to force you to go to the main page before you can go to the "group" page. It's just the nature of apps and the financial incentives on the social media sites to show you as many ads and "engagement hooks" as possible, which is easier to do on the global page. So let's reimagine a new kind of internet site. I like bullet journals, and lot's of other people do too. It's essentially like a hobby or a craft. Ideally my friends and I would like to: - chat online with each interactively - leave messages for each other in threads - audio/video chat for people who want to - buy craft supplies for doing bullet journals (stencils, stickers, fountain pens, notebooks) - showcase photos of bullet journals that we've made - jointly curate a page of bullet journal links for members to use as a reference (private wiki) - !! Feel like this is a safe place that can be administered to our own community standards Just to be clear what I mean, buying a notebook in this site doesn't mean linking to an amazon page. It means someone in the "club" vouches for a product, and sells it to you and if you have a problem you can contact the person in the club to work out your issue. Their reputation with the group keeps them invested in being a good seller. If the club website infrastructure has services to facilitate payment and/or fullfillment (that is, warehouse and shipping) then that's a big help. Update: Geocities was an online site at the very beginning of the web. Lots of people expressing themselves with raw html, and grouped by interests into little virtual neighborhoods with streets and buildings. 99 Percent Invisible has a great podcast about this. See Also: - [[Machine Context]] - [[Timelines]] ## Study Guide [Ambient Co-presence](https://maggieappleton.com/ambient-copresence) [Ambient Intimacy – disambiguity](https://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/) These authors above miss out on the significance of the fact that this intimacy is moderated through someone else's agenda, as opposed to the same things happening in real life [[the internet - by Maya]] [Being From Somewhere 1: Letters - by Karl Schroeder](https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/being-from-somewhere-1-letters)