Date: Saturday August 05th, 2023
Time: 12:17:47 PM MST
From: @vga256
Groups: tomo.dev
Subject: the city and the izakaya
Time: 12:17:47 PM MST
From: @vga256
Groups: tomo.dev
Subject: the city and the izakaya
* this week has been a bit of pause on coding to think about how tomo might differentiate itself from the concept of "social media", which i've become disaffected with over the past ten years.
* tomo is, at its core, a collection of discussion forums/groups/rooms, browsable with any NNTP client. NNTP is a fundamental aspect of the server that will never change.
? but within that constraint, there are a ton of opportunities for enhancements and customizations in the client interface that can make it a lot more fun, interesting and usable.
* my experience in user created online worlds comes mainly from online services of the 80s and 90s. Prodigy and CompuServe were my first two interactive online services. you could chat with other human beings using a "room" metaphor. BBSes were another variation upon this theme, with a smaller userbase and access to more online games.
* MUDs came along later for me, thanks to university Internet access in the early 90s. while I did not appreciate this at the time, many MUDs allowed users to customize their characters, add monsters, and even create rooms of their own using scripting languages.
* and then, in 1996, i was invited to join a little MMORPG called Furcadia. It was a graphical MUD... players were free to use the map editor and scripting language to create their own rooms called "Dreams". Each Dream had a portal to it from the starting area of the game, and stepping into it would teleport you to the person's Dream, like following a hyperlink. Dreams were completely the creation of the dreamer, and walking into one meant you were, effectively, standing in someone else's home as an invited guest. a Dream was an instance, separate from the shared world of the game, yet linked via a hub-spoke design. if there was an implicit spatial relationship with Dreams in Furcadia, it was like the "End of Time" area in Chrono Trigger (SFC/SNES, 1995), with an array of labelled teleporters to step onto and magically re-appear elsewhere. there were no limits on the number of Dreams that players could create, so there was no limit on the amount of virtual space allotted to players.
* then Ultima Online along, and adapted that same formula in subtle ways. players could build homes and decorate them, but no longer via a tile editor. houses and rooms were pre-fabricated by the game's artists to suit a particular medieval aesthetic, and could be stamped on to the game map by purchasing a deed. in UO, one did not teleport to visit a home - they simply stepped through the doorway, because each house existed in the same shared world. this was a huge change to our implicit spatial relationship: home ownership and personalization suddenly existed all within the same level playing field, and that field had a limited geography. there was only so much space to go around, making space itself a scarce resource. players began to fight for vacant land, in a cruel mirroring of medievalism. this had a second unintended consequence: because home ownership was a major means for self-expression and customization, those without homes had fewer opportunities to make the world their own.
* EverQuest and World of WarCraft took this limitation of player creative freedom to their logical end, and constrained all player behaviour to costuming and player statistics. it was no longer possible to own anything beyond the meagre possessions in your pack, and even then, those could not be dropped on the ground. your character was effectively a car that you could paint and put a nice spoiler on, and you lived in your car. user-created worlds were dead, and amusement parks were in.
! reddit, facebook, myspace, discord and other massive online services relied upon the stripped-down model of the amusement park, which was easier to police and design, because opportunities for user self-expression were so extremely constrained. old reddit allowed users to customize a subreddit's CSS. myspace allowed custom HTML and inline styles. discord allows for custom emoji. facebook - well, changing a few page labels. by this point the concept of a creative user is so stripped to the bones that the only real opportunities for personal expression is via what you say, and how you say it.
? so the question is: can tomo do something better with its architecture by allowing users to be creative people, to take pride in their self-created spaces, and encourage others to treat those spaces with respect?
? what kind of spatial metaphor would make this possible? i picked the domain tomo.city for a very specific reason: i thought about each tomo discussion group as a little izakaya you might find in a quiet hidden alley off the main streets of Tokyo. you step inside, and find either a collection of strangers who look up, surprised to see a new face... or a tightly huddled group of friends who look up and smile to see a familiar one.
> there is no word in the english language that adequately expresses this spatial peculiarity of urban Japanese life. the word "room", or "discussion group" or "forum" does not capture the intimacy and the ubiquity of the izakaya.
! each discussion group owner/moderator is like the owner-bartender of a tiny izakaya: picking the particular alley it can be found, responsible for the well-being of their patrons, the decorations on the wall, and for setting the tone of the place the moment someone new steps in.
.............................
* tomo is, at its core, a collection of discussion forums/groups/rooms, browsable with any NNTP client. NNTP is a fundamental aspect of the server that will never change.
? but within that constraint, there are a ton of opportunities for enhancements and customizations in the client interface that can make it a lot more fun, interesting and usable.
* my experience in user created online worlds comes mainly from online services of the 80s and 90s. Prodigy and CompuServe were my first two interactive online services. you could chat with other human beings using a "room" metaphor. BBSes were another variation upon this theme, with a smaller userbase and access to more online games.
* MUDs came along later for me, thanks to university Internet access in the early 90s. while I did not appreciate this at the time, many MUDs allowed users to customize their characters, add monsters, and even create rooms of their own using scripting languages.
* and then, in 1996, i was invited to join a little MMORPG called Furcadia. It was a graphical MUD... players were free to use the map editor and scripting language to create their own rooms called "Dreams". Each Dream had a portal to it from the starting area of the game, and stepping into it would teleport you to the person's Dream, like following a hyperlink. Dreams were completely the creation of the dreamer, and walking into one meant you were, effectively, standing in someone else's home as an invited guest. a Dream was an instance, separate from the shared world of the game, yet linked via a hub-spoke design. if there was an implicit spatial relationship with Dreams in Furcadia, it was like the "End of Time" area in Chrono Trigger (SFC/SNES, 1995), with an array of labelled teleporters to step onto and magically re-appear elsewhere. there were no limits on the number of Dreams that players could create, so there was no limit on the amount of virtual space allotted to players.
* then Ultima Online along, and adapted that same formula in subtle ways. players could build homes and decorate them, but no longer via a tile editor. houses and rooms were pre-fabricated by the game's artists to suit a particular medieval aesthetic, and could be stamped on to the game map by purchasing a deed. in UO, one did not teleport to visit a home - they simply stepped through the doorway, because each house existed in the same shared world. this was a huge change to our implicit spatial relationship: home ownership and personalization suddenly existed all within the same level playing field, and that field had a limited geography. there was only so much space to go around, making space itself a scarce resource. players began to fight for vacant land, in a cruel mirroring of medievalism. this had a second unintended consequence: because home ownership was a major means for self-expression and customization, those without homes had fewer opportunities to make the world their own.
* EverQuest and World of WarCraft took this limitation of player creative freedom to their logical end, and constrained all player behaviour to costuming and player statistics. it was no longer possible to own anything beyond the meagre possessions in your pack, and even then, those could not be dropped on the ground. your character was effectively a car that you could paint and put a nice spoiler on, and you lived in your car. user-created worlds were dead, and amusement parks were in.
! reddit, facebook, myspace, discord and other massive online services relied upon the stripped-down model of the amusement park, which was easier to police and design, because opportunities for user self-expression were so extremely constrained. old reddit allowed users to customize a subreddit's CSS. myspace allowed custom HTML and inline styles. discord allows for custom emoji. facebook - well, changing a few page labels. by this point the concept of a creative user is so stripped to the bones that the only real opportunities for personal expression is via what you say, and how you say it.
? so the question is: can tomo do something better with its architecture by allowing users to be creative people, to take pride in their self-created spaces, and encourage others to treat those spaces with respect?
? what kind of spatial metaphor would make this possible? i picked the domain tomo.city for a very specific reason: i thought about each tomo discussion group as a little izakaya you might find in a quiet hidden alley off the main streets of Tokyo. you step inside, and find either a collection of strangers who look up, surprised to see a new face... or a tightly huddled group of friends who look up and smile to see a familiar one.
> there is no word in the english language that adequately expresses this spatial peculiarity of urban Japanese life. the word "room", or "discussion group" or "forum" does not capture the intimacy and the ubiquity of the izakaya.
! each discussion group owner/moderator is like the owner-bartender of a tiny izakaya: picking the particular alley it can be found, responsible for the well-being of their patrons, the decorations on the wall, and for setting the tone of the place the moment someone new steps in.