Lit skis

[📹 leoslemett]

On being useful

Reflecting on the passed year, as one does around this time, i am looking back at a book that does not exist yet.

My original intention was to have finished written this ‘book about Nostr’ months ago. This was mostly due to the fact that the first part about the problems with the status quo and how we got into this mess was so easy to write. On the one hand because this year just kept handing out example after example where the problems lie, be it the Brazil X-ban or the myriad of other occurrences; but on the other hand more importantly because i already had that narrative down years ago. While digging through my hard-drive i found an interview i did in 2019 that was never published, where i laid out all the fundamental problems, and the story is basically the same (video down below, it is in Dutch). This part of the book has been mostly done for many many months now. The issue was describing Nostr itself.

I can’t pin point when I got aware of Nostr, and I mainly build my intuition around the protocol outside of the ‘community’ or use of the protocol itself; partly because I am not a developer nor much of a ‘social media’ user. It is only recently I actually started looking at NIPs due to my work with Nostr Special Forces, and for the longest time I never even read NIP-01. This way of going at it was facilitated by the fact I could just discuss Nostr matters with its creator, to the point where he rather have me stay blissfully unaware of the NIPs out there to keep my thinking uninfluenced by them.

But when it got to describing the Nostr phenomena for the book, I felt it was not enough. I started using the clients, turn NAK into a new best friend and engage with the broader (developer) community. The hardest part is that Nostr is still so actively evolving that describing it in its current state would make the book outdated by the time it comes out. Giving projections as to what it will become has its own problems because it might as well turn out to be completely wrong. It forces me to gain enough confidence in my perspective. Having enough confidence is one thing, but that still leaves me in finding the words to shape an accessible narrative in describing a new paradigm. This is ultimately the point of the book and I figured the only way through that problem is iteration.

I am passed the point of diminishing returns on my narrative iterations, so the only thing that is left to do is put is down on paper definitively. So there you have it, my new years resolution. Basically the same one I had last year, but it is what it is.

Merry Christmas Nostr.