This post has been bugging me for a while. Not for the text about Mastodon, but the screen cap of the wires article.
"Enough to build a town square on".
I read this. Over and over. And I wonder if anyone in tech, anyone who talks about an online town square. Have ever actually visited a town square. Sure we may have the picture in our head of the piazza of some Italian town, with terracotta roofs, and cafes in the lower story of every building. 1/n
https://mastodon.terabyte-computing.com/@cloudguy/111116664690127109
They see the centre of commerce, of business. People buying coffee, buying lunch, buying a paper to read. But what makes a town square a square is not the retail and commercial space around it. It's the fountain in the middle with a bench. The statues on plinths. The trees surrounded by seating. A town square. Done right. When the cafes have yet to open first thing on a Sunday, when all the businesses are closed. You can sit with a friend. And talk. Maybe about bikes. Or the weather. Or news 2/n
@quixoticgeek recently having this argument with developers who seem determined to remove the seats, trees, food trucks, bike racks and so on from a square, so we can admire their new building more. 🙄
