Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
One of the interesting things about the history of the #Fediverse is how many of its ideas come from places that, at first glance, seem completely unrelated to social media or network technology. #ActivityPub is a good example – the word activity carries a much older intellectual history, including the work of Soviet psychologist Alexei … Continue reading OMN: Activity, culture and why Soviet…
One of the most useful ways to understand the mess we are in today is to ask a deceptively simple question – what comes first – the individual or the network? #Mainstreaming economics startes with the individual, were sociology, anthropology and related traditions start somewhere else – with relationships, institutions, communities and the social structures … Continue reading The individual, is…
Our current working models of “governance” in #opensource are mostly: Monarchy – the dictator for life.Aristocracy – the devs.Oligarchy – NGOs/funders.And way out on the edge: Democracy – the users. We need better governance native to the #openweb. Let’s look at this at a more personal level before the normal wider social view. Yes, in … Continue reading Public conversation about public problems →
The problems we face in the #openweb are often presented as technology problems. Which protocol, platform, licence, federation path, software? Which standard? These questions matter, but they are not the foundations of the problem. A lot of what we are seeing is really a cultural clash. Different parts of the alternative tech world have different … Continue reading The #openweb needs diversity,…
This summer, heat, fires, the soon to come winter floods and insurance withdrawals will make #climatechaos harder to treat as something happening somewhere else. For years, climate breakdown was framed as an activist issue, something discussed by environmental groups while mainstream politics carried on with business as usual. That is changing, people are experiencing the … Continue reading This…
For 50 years we have worshipped the #deathcult – endless growth, extraction, competition and individualism – and now we are living with the damage that this has done to our society and the living world. The current hard shift to the right won’t fix any of this, it simply empowers the #nastyfew to surf the … Continue reading Grassroots #openweb infrastructure is need for a different future →
The internet didn’t just accidentally become shit. Yes, the #dotcons are responsible for plenty of it: surveillance, advertising, addictive algorithms, platform lock-in, spam, fake reviews and the endless extraction of human attention. But focusing on a few companies misses the bigger story, that the mess is the outcome of decades of wider #deathcult worshipping political … Continue reading The…
For those of us who’ve spent the last twenty years working around alternative technology, grassroots media and activism, the hardest thing to watch has been how deeply the #dotcons have become embedded in the culture. We know the problems, we’ve been talking about surveillance, extraction, algorithmic manipulation, platform lock-in and the destruction of community for … Continue reading Living…
Just because you feel attacked doesn’t mean someone is attacking you, sometimes that feeling is worth listening to, it may be telling you that something doesn’t fit with how you currently see the world. But a feeling is not a fact, this matters because much political discussion now begins and ends with personal reactions rather … Continue reading Feelings/facts, stupidindividualism is about…
The current wave of wildfires across Europe is not simply a natural disaster, it is also exposing a deeper mess, the failure of our information systems. Instead of explaining why Europe is burning, significant sections of the corporate media are either ignoring #climatechaos or distracting by blaming rewilding, net-zero policies and environmental protections. Rather than … Continue reading Media,…