A community crafting knowledge of connection, lorecraft, and digital realms. RIP December 31st 2024.
Threshold
Thank you all for the journey over the last 2 years. Folklore began in August 2019, to gather like-minded folks interested in how the internet is shaping culture around the world. Folklore crowdfunded more than ~20k USD, all of which has been used to commission new essays (8 to be exact), create an proof-of-concept community LLM chatbot called ARK ("Authentic Record of Knowledge", short for Archive), and developing a working onchain-to-RSS feed for collective curation. It has been an incubati...
Threshold
Thank you all for the journey over the last 2 years. Folklore began in August 2019, to gather like-minded folks interested in how the internet is shaping culture around the world. Folklore crowdfunded more than ~20k USD, all of which has been used to commission new essays (8 to be exact), create an proof-of-concept community LLM chatbot called ARK ("Authentic Record of Knowledge", short for Archive), and developing a working onchain-to-RSS feed for collective curation. It has been an incubati...
Infrastructure and Ossification
IntroductionAustin, just like several other southwestern American cities, is not built for walking. However, after several years of becoming familiar with its terrain (primarily through driving), I discovered discrete pockets up and down the superfluous city grid that run against this popular notion. I was fortunate enough to find a home in one of these blocks, where I can walk to a grocery store, a coffee shop and a bar within 15 minutes, but my luck has run out. The little co-op grocery sto...
Infrastructure and Ossification
IntroductionAustin, just like several other southwestern American cities, is not built for walking. However, after several years of becoming familiar with its terrain (primarily through driving), I discovered discrete pockets up and down the superfluous city grid that run against this popular notion. I was fortunate enough to find a home in one of these blocks, where I can walk to a grocery store, a coffee shop and a bar within 15 minutes, but my luck has run out. The little co-op grocery sto...
How to Repair a Spaceport: A metaphor for our technological present
Welcome to Folklore, a community exploring the labyrinth of networked worlds. In this newly-commissioned essay, Kei Kreutler reflects on standardization and technological interoperability through the metaphor of the fictional spaceport. Kei’s work explores how cultural narratives of technology shape what worlds we can build.No one knows how to repair a spaceport. This is because spaceports primarily exist as a fiction. Spaceports imply the existence of inter-Solar System, if not intergalactic...
How to Repair a Spaceport: A metaphor for our technological present
Welcome to Folklore, a community exploring the labyrinth of networked worlds. In this newly-commissioned essay, Kei Kreutler reflects on standardization and technological interoperability through the metaphor of the fictional spaceport. Kei’s work explores how cultural narratives of technology shape what worlds we can build.No one knows how to repair a spaceport. This is because spaceports primarily exist as a fiction. Spaceports imply the existence of inter-Solar System, if not intergalactic...
Latent Communities in an Artificial Internet
A Folklore Essay by Leo Nasskau (FC: @lsn) There is enormous interest in building new movements today. But you don’t have to start anew if you want to change the world. Communities lie on a spectrum in terms of their origins: either they have been created to achieve a goal, or they appear to have been created almost by default; no purpose, they just exist. Who can harness the latent power of those default communities? What power do they have?Digital ContextsWhen we examined historical sources...
Latent Communities in an Artificial Internet
A Folklore Essay by Leo Nasskau (FC: @lsn) There is enormous interest in building new movements today. But you don’t have to start anew if you want to change the world. Communities lie on a spectrum in terms of their origins: either they have been created to achieve a goal, or they appear to have been created almost by default; no purpose, they just exist. Who can harness the latent power of those default communities? What power do they have?Digital ContextsWhen we examined historical sources...
Welcome to the Swarm
Last summer, Rafa (@rafa on Farcaster) joined the Summer of Protocols to explore how protocols shape our lives. During his research, Rafa looked into how people, bots, and content are coordinating in digital spaces. Here we present an excerpt of the full research for Folklore readers. The full essay is available as a PDF here. On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms are harbingers of misinformation, ...
Welcome to the Swarm
Last summer, Rafa (@rafa on Farcaster) joined the Summer of Protocols to explore how protocols shape our lives. During his research, Rafa looked into how people, bots, and content are coordinating in digital spaces. Here we present an excerpt of the full research for Folklore readers. The full essay is available as a PDF here. On the internet, we are part of swarms: networks of people, bots, and content, coordinated through algorithmic feedback loops. Swarms are harbingers of misinformation, ...
