I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric

The Internet used to be semi literally a place you went - a desktop in the corner of some room, not central on a desk, not in your pocket. And with a ritual to access it on top of that and the dial up sounds and all.

It's more present but also more invisible now, yeah.

It's wild, and absolutely worth writing about, that at some point in recent years, the concept of "AFK" basically ceased to exist.

Yes, we aren't technically near a keyboard most of the time today, but we are never AFK in a conceptual sense. Even when sleeping.

Back then Broadcast/Multicast (1 to all/1 to many) was expensive. It quite often resulted in routers and switches catching fire. The chips were too slow.

A side effect was we didn't have to deal with what Claude Shannon told us happens if everyone is broadcasting - noise increases - no one is really heard - people speak louder - people repeat messages - everyone is getting their energy drained.

Today Broadcast is free. And thats what we see happening.

No matter where you are, everyone is always connected...

That's the problem with phone apps. They either spam you with notifications or you forget to open them. Desktop IRC clients were more available for passive checking whenever you glanced at the window, but out of the way otherwise.

The “satisfied” part is the most harmful imo. This is what causes lack of actual social interaction and real friendships. Loneliness is on the rise as friendships are on a decline, this is a byproduct of social media gratification

The other more obviously negative components tired/overwhelmed are more of a hangover effect people have after over indulgence. But they’re addicted so ultimately always go back for more (most people).

It’s weird for me to witness as I never indulged in social media and could always see it for what it is. I watched my wife use and just classified it as a huge waste of time (and had some not so fun, “get off your phone” conversations along the way). Some people are finally coming around to it but a lot of damage has been done and a lot of social fabric has eroded.

Also that a bunch of the time you're contacted by a random online it eventually leads to them trying to get your credit card info.

Sounds exactly like ham radio operators.

I've used the username "donatj" basically everywhere since the late 1990s with just a couple exceptions.

Dude beat me to it on Skype, I called him just out of the blue and had a nice conversation with him, lived in Denmark as I recall. Really friendly guy. I can't imagine doing that now though, let alone the person on the other end actually picking up.

Some people used AIM like this as well, at least I did. I left my computer on all the time, so I was always online.

I was in college during the peak of AIM and it was useful to know who was at their computer or not, which I believe was still viable. Around meal times, we could quickly scan for who was around to see if they wanted to head down to the cafeteria. If they weren’t around, there was no point it asking. For time sensitive messages, online status matters.

That’s a great idea! I remember on an Android phone - maybe Galaxy Nexus, or the original Pixel - you could blink an LED with different colors for different app notifications. I had blue, yellow, red, and green for various apps, and so without ever having the screen turn on or the device make sounds, I could tell if I should bother to check.

To me, not having any sensory disabilities, that’s a lower cognitive load than banners or other text/icon-based notifications.

If you have Apple devices and share your locations in Find My, she could use the Find My app to make your devices beep loudly and optionally show a message. Great for urgency, since the beep is really loud and doesn’t stop until you tell it to.

Your current setup is, of course, much more interesting.

They said a status board on top of their monitor, not every corner of their house. This seems like a very unobtrusive signal to me. Plus, some people like to hide or obscure their phone from their field of view during work, to minimize distractions. Honestly, the only person I immediately check my phone for is my wife. If I could have a priority indicator along with that, I’d love it. There are some things I need to know immediately (a kid is sick and one of us needs to pick them up, etc.) regardless of what I’m doing, and there are others where it can wait until I’m done with a meeting.

Why back in MY day we just had 5-7 kids stationed throughout the house. A simple “Joey, go tell Mom” was all you needed!

/s

No offense, but your privilege is offensively visible.

Deaf people need this.

That's the difference between people who give in and people who don't. This is not about "opsec", it's about exercising your fundamental right to privacy. Majority of people are reckless, the ones who take a second to think about it are not

The Discord of 2020 and before absolutely supported text channels, voice channels, multiple of the above, customizable notifications, and everything required here. Like OP and many others I found myself on a number of Discord servers during the pandemic for voice/video chat, gaming together, etc. and that app was the straightforward solution both for organizing and the actual event for groups of any size from 4-20.

The piece was published this week, and yall seem to be missing the point. The goal is to let people know when a VC is happening amongst this group, not to do party matching for whatever game is being played.

yeah calling something a "four-letter word" is intended to evoke the idea that, people react negatively upon merely hearing the word (as though it were an expletive)

The clickbait makes you click, and the story is about a cool hack, so you upvote. I don't see how this is unbelievable

I see where you're coming from, but I like the way the story is formatted.

There's plenty to doom and gloom about with the state of tech right now, but this is a good reminder that sometimes even Big Internet tools, with a little ingenuity, can sometimes be repurposed to serve the users and not some corporation's bottom line.

It's kind of a throwback to the olden days where you might stand up an IRC server or something similar just for your friend group. I like seeing people returning to the small internet where it serves as a substrate for real people doing real things.