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"plaintext": "Welcome to Working Knowledge, a personal newsletter from me, Toby Higbie, about the politics and practice of history, labor organizing, education, and assorted other interests. I research and teach labor and immigration history and labor studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. I've been involved with labor and popular education since the mid-1990s, first as an organizer, then in a public-facing research library, and for the last 20 years as a university professor. "
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"plaintext": "Working Knowledge is my experiment with the decentralized social web. The newsletter is published with Offprint, a system built on the AT Protocol, the same system that powers Bluesky. I've watched the development of Bluesky and the AT Protocol with curiosity, not as a developer but as someone with commitments to public education and democracy, and both scholarly and practical interests in the circulation of ideas and images within and between social movements. Having first engaged the internet in the early 1990s, I've seen many programs, platforms and services come and go. The shift from platforms to protocol seems promising to me. But the jury is still out. Will protocol based services weaken the grip of corporate platforms on public communications, settle into a system that supports one dominant platform, or fizzle out altogether? "
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"plaintext": "Over the last year, the shape of a future protocol-based social web has started to come into view. There are two major social web protocols designed to facilitate communication across different services. ActivityPub powers Mastodon and related systems. The AT Protocol powers Bluesky and its related systems. Unfortunately, the two protocols don't automatically talk to each other, but there are efforts to bridge them. AT Protocol has grown quickly, including the advent of independent services built around communities like Blacksky, Northsky, Eurosky, and Gander. These services are all Bluesky-like micro-blogging platforms. But AT Protocol and ActivityPub also support photo and video sharing, a code repository, community-building and publishing systems. "
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"plaintext": "Unlike Facebook, Instagram and X, which are enclosed platforms, protocol-based services run on shared rules of engagement that allow different services to talk to each other. By way of analogy, email and basic websites are based on communication protocols. You can change email programs while using the same email address and access the same website with any browser. You can't do that with Instagram, for instance, because Meta makes money by keeping you and your eyeballs glued to their platforms. The protocol concept intends to prevent platform lock-in by allowing users to migrate all their data to an inter-operable service. If a fascist gets control of Bluesky you can just move to another AT Proto service. One advocate of the protocol has called AT Proto \"the enshittification kill switch.\" That's the appeal. It's currently more theoretical than practical for the typical user, but things are changing quickly."
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"plaintext": "With all this in mind, I'll be using Working Knowledge as an experimental space, sharing notes on the work of historians in the digital age, the challenge of organizing working people in an era of hyper-capitalism, and the prospects for democracy under competitive authoritarianism. And to keep the mood light, I'll post some pictures of my cats. Wish me luck!"
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"textContent": "Welcome to Working Knowledge, a personal newsletter from me, Toby Higbie, about the politics and practice of history, labor organizing, education, and assorted other interests. I research and teach labor and immigration history and labor studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. I've been involved with labor and popular education since the mid-1990s, first as an organizer, then in a public-facing research library, and for the last 20 years as a university professor. \nWorking Knowledge is my experiment with the decentralized social web. The newsletter is published with Offprint, a system built on the AT Protocol, the same system that powers Bluesky. I've watched the development of Bluesky and the AT Protocol with curiosity, not as a developer but as someone with commitments to public education and democracy, and both scholarly and practical interests in the circulation of ideas and images within and between social movements. Having first engaged the internet in the early 1990s, I've seen many programs, platforms and services come and go. The shift from platforms to protocol seems promising to me. But the jury is still out. Will protocol based services weaken the grip of corporate platforms on public communications, settle into a system that supports one dominant platform, or fizzle out altogether? \nOver the last year, the shape of a future protocol-based social web has started to come into view. There are two major social web protocols designed to facilitate communication across different services. ActivityPub powers Mastodon and related systems. The AT Protocol powers Bluesky and its related systems. Unfortunately, the two protocols don't automatically talk to each other, but there are efforts to bridge them. AT Protocol has grown quickly, including the advent of independent services built around communities like Blacksky, Northsky, Eurosky, and Gander. These services are all Bluesky-like micro-blogging platforms. But AT Protocol and ActivityPub also support photo and video sharing, a code repository, community-building and publishing systems. \nUnlike Facebook, Instagram and X, which are enclosed platforms, protocol-based services run on shared rules of engagement that allow different services to talk to each other. By way of analogy, email and basic websites are based on communication protocols. You can change email programs while using the same email address and access the same website with any browser. You can't do that with Instagram, for instance, because Meta makes money by keeping you and your eyeballs glued to their platforms. The protocol concept intends to prevent platform lock-in by allowing users to migrate all their data to an inter-operable service. If a fascist gets control of Bluesky you can just move to another AT Proto service. One advocate of the protocol has called AT Proto \"the enshittification kill switch.\" That's the appeal. It's currently more theoretical than practical for the typical user, but things are changing quickly.\nThere are at least three AT Proto-based publishing services: Leaflet, Pckt, and Offprint. I chose Offprint for my newsletter because it seems best for long-form writing and just looks more like other popular newsletter systems like Ghost and Substack. Like the rest of the protocol world, Offprint is still in development so we'll get to experience a new service as it rolls out.\nWith all this in mind, I'll be using Working Knowledge as an experimental space, sharing notes on the work of historians in the digital age, the challenge of organizing working people in an era of hyper-capitalism, and the prospects for democracy under competitive authoritarianism. And to keep the mood light, I'll post some pictures of my cats. Wish me luck!"
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