Ben Ramsey @ramsey@phpc.social

I don’t discuss lots of coding or tech challenges because they don’t interest me. I’m interested in people and using tech to make our world a better place.

As a result, politics are a necessary part of the discussion.

I had contemplated leaving politics out of my feed and trying to stick purely to tech, but that feels disingenuous and also does not help accomplish my goal of trying to make the world a better place.

I’m Ben, a web dev, author, & speaker. I’ve been at this for >20 years, & I’m always eager to help. If you have questions about the Web, FOSS, PHP, or APIs, ask.

I advocate for decentralization, open source, open standards, & the Commons; I believe good UX is the key to mass adoption.

I’m active in the PHP community. I founded Atlanta PHP & co-organize @nashvillephp, & I authored the popular ramsey/uuid library.

I’ve spoken at many conferences. If you see me at one, say “hi.”

#introductions

Is there a way to mute just a particular posting client on Mastodon? I want to mute everything from Mastodon Twitter Crossposter.

New #birdsite in “night mode” looks very familiar. 🤔

Dot social being down is kind of like having a netsplit on IRC. The rest of us are all still here.

As software developers, we are cogs in the machine of the new world we are building, but we aren’t mindless. We can make an impact, and we can influence the products we build. If we don’t, we cannot wash our hands of the outcomes, saying, “I was just doing what I was told.”

The algorithms we design and the data we feed to the models we train are all influenced by our own experiences and biases. We have to be aware of those biases at play and mitigate them by working with a diverse team.

My political views have changed dramatically over the years, and they continue to change. Some call that flip-flopping and being wishy-washy. I call it growing as a human.

But what interests me most is the ethics of software development and how that plays into automation and AI. US unemployment rates are very low, but that’s because of the gig economy and low-paying jobs. All of these jobs will evaporate with AI and automation.

I don’t discuss lots of coding or tech challenges because they don’t interest me. I’m interested in people and using tech to make our world a better place.

As a result, politics are a necessary part of the discussion.

I had contemplated leaving politics out of my feed and trying to stick purely to tech, but that feels disingenuous and also does not help accomplish my goal of trying to make the world a better place.

“Evidence of the first beer believed to have been brewed in the UK, dating back more than 2,000 years, has been uncovered by road workers.”

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/31/early-pint-evidence-of-first-british-beer-found-in-cambridgeshire

Rockin’ Sidney’s “My Toot-Toot” pops in my head too much when I’m using Mastodon.

https://youtu.be/FGnu3GdUna8

It’s so odd to watch movies made just a decade ago before smart phones were ubiquitous. Plot lines are so different now because of technology.

Here I am with my new travel guitar and tiny, 1-watt Marshall amp to go with it (I plug in headphones). It’s perfect for practicing in hotel rooms.