I took an unremarkable fall on an unremarkable log crossing, and sprained my thumb, or so I thought. It turns out I did some damage that’s going to take the summer to heal up.

It’s called “skiers’ thumb”:

AKA Stener Lesion:

I go in for surgery and a cast Monday. The ligament that broke has moved up into my hand, so they have to pin it back on to the bone, on the other side of the first thumb joint. The doctor says there’s 2 months in a splint/cast, then another month recovery. So I’m out until September. It’s going to take a while to get my head around this. Mountain biking has been my major activity for a couple of years now, and I’m pretty much addicted to daily exercise. I’ll have to try trail running or something to keep me from loosing my mind.

I was thinking about why Facebook is so popular, despite really adding nothing new to the Internet. It’s really the packaging: type in a URL, go there, look for friends, read posts, post things, etc. Anyone can do it. The downsides: confusion about how it works – who sees what, privacy issues, and the fact that it’s really just a spam engine, are generally lost on less sophisticated users.

Before trying to tackle the usablity and packaging issues, I think it would be interesting to come up with a guide on how to do social networking with standard, open protocols, open source tools, etc., in a way that lets the participants own their network. With this first instalment of what I hope is a series, I want to lay out what social networking on the internet really is, at a conceptual and user scenario level. I’m going to ramble a bit, but this is a blog, not a textbook, so cut me some slack.

To get started, you need a way to find people and initiate a connection. This connection has privileges – people you’re connected to see your broadcast information, and information they send to you, either directly, or broadcast, gets special treatment. For now, let’s call this list of people a whitelist. Facebook treats these connections as reciprocal, but I’m not sure they have to be.
So there are two steps to getting started: finding people, and asking for permission/participation in communication.

Finding People
The history of the internet makes this difficult. E-mail addresses are the most important way to identify people, as they are unique. But we there’s no easy way to find someone’s e-mail address. Also, people’s e-mail addresses change over time. Worse still, the history of spam, malware, and scams has made people understandably hesitant to publish there e-mail address.
So we’re left with services/sites like Facebook and linked-in, Google profiles, as well as simple web searches to find people and a way to contact them.

White-Lists
For e-mail, white-lists can be implemented in the e-mail client via filters. Blogs such as Wordpress can be configured so that comments require moderation. Once a comment has been approved, the sender of the comment is essentially whitelisted.

Once we have our network, in the form of people and their whitelists, we need to have some means of communication. I think there are three important types:

1) Direct
A direct, person-to-person communication. Examples are e-mail to a single person, or an IM message.

2) Multicast
A direct communication to a list of recipients. E-mail lists, and e-mails with multiple recipients are multicast communication.

3) Broadcast
In essence, this is publishing information on the web, often via a blog, or a posting on some other web site.

Note that one large issue with Facebook is that its users are lead to believe that their postings are Multicast (to their Friends), but in fact they’re essential Broadcast, via Facebooks’ Friend-of-Friend exposure, plus their willingness to provide APIs to partners, and the general complexity of their privacy model and its implications.

They’re great, but I’m down one. I crashed on a log crossing, landed hard on my left hand and bent my thumb back farther than a 50 year-old thumb was meant to go. My plan of doing the 20 mi MTB race at Willowdale this Sunday seems doubtful. I’m feeling pretty good about my abilites, but I kind of need to hold on to the handlebars with both hands.

I did this Tuesday, took yesterday off, and rode on the road today. I did my 13.5 mi loop in 45 min – that’s 18 mph average. I felt really good (except for the thumb). I see the hand Doctor tomorrow – I suspect there’s no major damage, but then, I can’t lift a beer with my left hand any more, so it is something to be taken seriously.

Olive died yesterday. She was hit by a car. Karen found her on her way to the gym early in the morning. I had to go and make sure it was really Olive, because Karen wasn’t sure.

It hit me pretty hard, in ways my rational side just can’t make sense of. Olive makes me think of the daemons in Pullman’s “His Dark Materials”. Though Olive as a favourite of mine had a much more tenuous and subtle connection. Wrapping her up in a towel and putting her in the trunk of my car, I felt like she was long-gone, and the world a colder, lonelier place.

Sam took it pretty hard as well. Davis really doesn’t understand, and told us we should get a fish, then made up a song about a dead cat, which made us all laugh and cry at the same time.

I was a bit far away with a 50mm (non-zoom) lens. Next time I’ll have to either get a longer lens, or be an annoying dad and run out into the field to take some action shots.

I did the NSNEMBA’s Monday night “relaxed pace” ride. We had 16 riders – some regulars, and some new folks. I’m not sure how relaxed the pace was. I was riding as fast as I could the whole time. We did stop periodically to let folks catch up. I guess that’s the relaxed part. According to my gear, we did 9.7 mi in 1:47 – a loop catching most of the single-track around the perimeter of Willowdale. Adding in yesterday’s 2:05, 11 mi ride, that’s 4 hours at a good pace for the week, and its only Monday.

My reasons are pretty simple. I want to own my content. I don’t want my social network monetized for corporate benefit, or at least I don’t want to contribute to that effort. A proprietary walled garden is bad for the internet as a means of free expression and communication.

I’ve been on e-mail since 1988, and run this site and been on IM since 1999. All that will continue.

The Internet has always been about social networks. Take control!

We spent Sunday visiting Steve on his boat. He took us for a cruise out around the harbor islands. The temperature varied between the 80 degree air off the land, and the 50 degree water. The kids fished a bit, and we had a great day all around.