A photograph of a short-eared owl mid-flight was the last Instagram post biology professor Carl Bergstrom shared before announcing his departure from the platform Jan. 10.
Or know how. Just because they are scientists doesn’t mean that they are necessarily particularly computer literate. I once had to explain to a university professor that wireless electricity doesn’t exist, and the Wi-Fi is only for internet. So yeah.
Well there’s two possible implementations of wireless power transfer.
There’s the way we use to charge our phones, Which is just an electromagnetic effect with no real way to extend its range. That technology has progressed as far as it’s ever going to get.
The other way is through power beaming using infrared lasers and special crystals. That technology does have potential but is nowhere close to being consumer ready yet. One day a router may include both features but not today and certainly not in 2016 when this happened.
Using social media is far removed from operating your own publicly available social media server.
This coming from someone who is trying to get more mastodon usage in higher ed. Profs aren’t the ones who operate these things. Merely getting the approval to get the project started is an immense task.
University IT departments don’t want to be running some random Mastodon on the server anyway. It’s got nothing to do with the universities day-to-day operations it’s just an extra thing that would be required on top of what they already do.
Also the only university professors who would actually be able to run the mastered on server themselves will be those in the computer science domain. A biologist isn’t going to know how to do it any more than any random member of the public.
It doesn’t make any sense for the University or specific professors to officially host a fediverse community in the first place, it is the wrong system of governance and community ownership here. Something like a student club or independent association of professors and students should host fediverse communities that then become unofficially associated with the University and the University should be hands off unless something really egregious happens.
The only reason to create a fediverse server directly under the auspices of a University or under an official capacity for the University would be to use the fediverse server as a public communication tool (like how Universities and other institutions might use Twitter), which actually isn’t a bad idea but is totally separate from what people are suggesting here…
Most scientists aren’t allowed to do stuff like that, or purely just don’t have the time.
Or know how. Just because they are scientists doesn’t mean that they are necessarily particularly computer literate. I once had to explain to a university professor that wireless electricity doesn’t exist, and the Wi-Fi is only for internet. So yeah.
I mean, wireless electricity tech does exist, it just sucks and is horribly inefficient at any reasonable distance.
Well there’s two possible implementations of wireless power transfer.
There’s the way we use to charge our phones, Which is just an electromagnetic effect with no real way to extend its range. That technology has progressed as far as it’s ever going to get.
The other way is through power beaming using infrared lasers and special crystals. That technology does have potential but is nowhere close to being consumer ready yet. One day a router may include both features but not today and certainly not in 2016 when this happened.
What… Are you taking about? I know hundreds of scientists and the vast majority of them interact with social media just as much as normal people.
And when is the next circle jerk about how making an account on the Fediverse is too complicated for “normal people?”
Using social media is far removed from operating your own publicly available social media server.
This coming from someone who is trying to get more mastodon usage in higher ed. Profs aren’t the ones who operate these things. Merely getting the approval to get the project started is an immense task.
My question was about the “scientists are not allowed to” part. I’ve never heard to such restrictions, and been in the field for more than a decade.
University IT departments don’t want to be running some random Mastodon on the server anyway. It’s got nothing to do with the universities day-to-day operations it’s just an extra thing that would be required on top of what they already do.
Also the only university professors who would actually be able to run the mastered on server themselves will be those in the computer science domain. A biologist isn’t going to know how to do it any more than any random member of the public.
It doesn’t make any sense for the University or specific professors to officially host a fediverse community in the first place, it is the wrong system of governance and community ownership here. Something like a student club or independent association of professors and students should host fediverse communities that then become unofficially associated with the University and the University should be hands off unless something really egregious happens.
The only reason to create a fediverse server directly under the auspices of a University or under an official capacity for the University would be to use the fediverse server as a public communication tool (like how Universities and other institutions might use Twitter), which actually isn’t a bad idea but is totally separate from what people are suggesting here…
I’d reckon that managing a social media server is more involved than just using social media.