Holding Hands with the "Fediverse" – ActivityPub at SFO Museum

Truth be told I haven't spent a ton of time digging into ActivityPub and the Fediverse. Largely if the Fediverse is just "Twitter, err, X, that doesn't suck" that just isn't that compelling to me. I’m not sure why this article caught my attention, but as I read it I got excited about the potential here for the first time.

Twenty-ish years in to the contemporary "social media" landscape (social networking, social messaging and sharing, social objects) it seems reasonable to ask: If people see value and meaning interacting with things that aren't "people", like venues or brands or services, then why wouldn't that same behaviour extend to individual objects in a museum? And why wouldn't a museum embrace that opportunity as a chance to share what it knows, understands and appreciates about an object beyond the limited space afforded by a wall label or an exhibition catalog, both in the moment and in the future? What happens when a new and exciting essay about an object is published and how is it shared with all the people who've seen that object in an exhibition and love it just as much the curator who chose it? Usually, if we're being honest, nothing happens.

I love the framing that a museum could have its own Fediverse instance not just to host one account, but an account for every object in it? I love this. This is actually interesting and fun. It made me instantly think how fun it would be to have a Fediverse instance for our home and what accounts could that have. The mind whirs. Worth noting though that I am someone that created a Twitter bot for my house in 2007. 😆