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
But the town square doesn't require you to pay anything just to be there. To sit and enjoy the art. To experience the architecture. Sure businesses can form around it. But it's that open space in the middle. Where people can sit. People can be. People can exist without paying any money. A collective space for everyone. Where a millionaire can play chess with the paper girl. Or the homeless can sit on a bench and warm in the sun. That is what a town square is. 3/n
If you take away the art, the fountains, the benches, the trees, the ability to be there without spending money. If you take all that away. You don't have a town square. You just have a street. Allow cars down it and all you got is a road.
So when the techbros talk about building a town square. They fail because they only see the cafes. The shops. The businesses. They overlook everything that makes a town square a town square. The shared communal cost free* place. (At point of use) 4/n
Sure we do all pay for it. A tiny amount of our taxes go to make the communal shared space. The taxes, so many a techbro, so many a rich guy, try to avoid. But we don't all pay the same. In theory we each pay according to our needs, and those who have nothing, aren't expected to pay something to be able to use the town square. There's no ticket office to get in. There's no membership fee. It's a shared space.
That's the town square we should be looking to have.
End rant. 5/5.
@quixoticgeek should it say "pay according to our ability, receive according to our needs"?
@mjr effectively yes. I think I ran out of characters.
@quixoticgeek this very much put me in mind of a lovely afternoon I spent with friends in Nottingham Old Market Square a few years ago.
Our kids played in the (very broad and shallow) fountains as we sat in the sun. Then we moved to the "beach" - a giant sandpit set up for all to use. We said hello to the big stone lions. We spent nothing until I decided to buy us all hot chocolate at the video game museum round the corner.
The Square is surrounded by shops, but I have no idea which ones.
@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. 🙄
@mjr aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
@quixoticgeek exactly this, the most important space in the square is the communal space, not commercial opportunity to exploit that
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