A n00b’s guide to Mastodon

Star Wars’ Andor is an excellent show, and I’ve been thinking about the scene quoted above the past week as Twitter has become a less-stable place. In that episode, Cassian Andor is speaking with Nemic, a true believer in the rebellion against the Empire. They were training for a raid on an Imperial base and Nemic was working on a computer navigator that would help their ship handle the escape. The navigator was decidedly Old Tech, like old cars from the ’50s and ’60s that were less complicated and easy to fix. Sure, new cars have more bells and whistles and do fancier things, but Nemic’s point was there is value to understanding the tech tool you rely on so much. When you know how to build and tinker with the tools you need, you don’t depend on someone to fix it when it breaks. You are free to use it as you like, and free to not take the easier path of an alternate tool where your use is constrained by what you’re toldIn essence, it’s a simple idea. There’s a tradeoff when we outsource building and management of critical tools to others. The tools get more complicated, harder to understand, and harder to solve when things go wrong. This is not to laud simplicity per se — old cars are fixable, but those fancy computers on modern models help us guzzle less gas and keep people more safe! Rather, the model is there to help us see the trade so we can choose clearly. To know when we’ve indulged convenience too much and swung too far in one direction between freedom and control.

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