BUFFSCAN
BuffScan NYC People Fusion Engine
12/22/2024
The BuffScan Instance of the New York City People Fusion is live. Create your account here.
Okay, so -- I've been busy for the past decade developing the "New York City People Fusion". It's an anonymous communication exchange platform by design that is meant to sit in an open computer browser tab on a PC device. The realities of digital demographics today are that anyone who reads this and tries it will nonetheless attempt to do so from their smartphone. Go ahead, but it's not going to be pretty.
Yes I wrote "decade". I wrote it while living in, ha, New York City, then let it rot. Never pushed it, never actually completed development to the extent that I have in the past few months.
Only now when I feel that principles of the communication style inherent to the original web and internet need to be restored and promoted by someone, christ, even if that is me, did I take to going back to it and almost re-writing it from scratch.
The BuffScan project, the effort to replace police scanning with something else, benefits as the first real-world iteration of the re-write. Within it is the starry-eyed vision that the parameters of the effort, not to mention the behind-the-scenes discussion of digital content collection and distribution related to public safety, come to life.
Couple of things you will find refreshingly odd about it.
First, you will notice no graphics except photos posted in the topic areas by users like you. Graphics inhibit the service and its development. Early BBSes relied on only ASCII for graphics, and this why so many people were able to start and support them. You might find it jarring at first, but you'll come to appreciate it, quick.
Second, it's for the computer, not your smartphone. This is why I saw BuffScan as such an ideal vehicle for its development iteration (which it is). People into police scanners, dramatic digital collection and distribution, are, by my measure, exactly the same type of people that have desktop PCs or laptops still part of their ensemble. An open session of BuffScan NYCPF is meant to live open in a browser tab on your PC, right next to your radio equipment or on the same PC you're processing videos. Yes, you can try to use it through a smartphone - maybe to quickly review a curiosity or create an account, but, it's not designed for that and results will vary. Desktop PC culture (which I label the "Console Culture") is real and will only get more significant in time.
It's also not a monetization effort. Everything exists to provide service and utility. There are no ads and nothing in the background slowing things down by way of telemetry. I am trying to develop a cause, not make the bucks.
Finally, you will notice that it is a communication that allows front-facing anonymity and tags. Technically, unless I intervene directly, there's nothing to stop this from turning into a weird dating site where people can still do "MFF" or "FFM" type searches. But, that's exactly it. The NYC People Fusion engine does allow a sole admin -- the "SysOp" (anyone remember that title - if you do, sounds like I just jostled a new member) to closely police the site and therefore, allow said anonymous chatter. It's not absolute anonymity -- as SysOp I could probably deduce anyone's identiy in any number of ways, but as the old internet didn't concern itself with that -- as long as nobody got weird -- that is how users expressed themselves freely.
I'm not saying there won't be problems or shall we say "adventures". I'm saying to you, become a part of them. While developing the BuffScan project, you will also be doing your part to retain the liberties of the old web and internet. These are two causes meant for each other and I am thrilled to have engineered this meld of them.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
Comments (0) | Promote (0) | PermShare | Focuses (102)
