My test wind mill, works :)

testing the tower with rope

Cuting notches in the frenceing ancer to hold it in place

happy volenter helper

The windmill is up with some more help

used Ratchit straps to hold it in place

testing on the wolethenstow marshes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality is being regulated.

Net neutrality is a good thing the open web works because of it. But legislating around net neutrality is dangerous as it opens up the actuality existing open web to the power of lobbyists. Historically the web has been shaped by undefined "traditions" built on open industrial protocols. This “open web” is starting to become thin with the enclosures of the dotcoms.

We are now resorting to "regulation" which takes this nieve working "open" inside the bureaucracy, historical experiences of this is a bit scary. I understand we need to bite the bullet and do, but with our current politicians toss a coin into the air and hope it lands on its side...

The are some good people working on this lets hope it doesn’t go wrong, the out come will be in the small details...

Here is my persional review of a good film to watch (DRAFT)

Its a feel good movie about brave people changing the world, and they are and they do. But its not a movie about the world changing.

The film reinforces my view that strong digital privacy like DRM in music, software and books is “broken” just like the 20th century copyright world. We as a culture need to get over this and move on. Many people knew this already. It's simple logic and lived experience to know that anything digital is open to copying and passing on. Your communication/identity is digital, so it's “open”.

The Snowden leeks, and the film about them, is important for the pre-digital majority who did/do not understand this, the head-in-the-ground worldview. The issue for me is that the film does not actually communicate the nature of open. It's probably why it won the Oscar, in that it allows people's heads not to move, which like many things in the modern world is a dangerous denial of reality we live in.

We need to pull our heads out of the sand and learn to live in the open, because that is where we are and where we will continue to be. Think for a moment: all the state spying, and power, goes out the window, when WE have the “open” knowledge and connections to self-organise. You as an indiviual can only hide from your friends, no matter how you try, and by doing this you're empowering your enemies and disempowering your friends. This film won an Oscar because it lets a whole generation of people keep looking the other way. They don’t have to turn to look at “open”.

For the technically curious, on the end credits it give a list of privacy tech that lots of people know are broken. Just takes a “google” search:

* The tor project – is not secure http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/tor-is-not-as-safe-as-you-may-think/

* Tails – uses Tor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_%28operating_system%29

* Debian/linux is nice, and being open source could be more secure, maybe, who actually knows?

* Off-the-record messaging – being p2p security might work, but equally vulnerable to screen/key logging etc.

* GNU privacy guard – being p2p can work https://vimeo.com/56881481

* Truecrypt – failed in a public way, like most open projects nobody knows if its secure or not http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsecur/opinion-truecrypt-the-nsa-and-the-myth-of-open-source-security.html

* Securedrop is you guessed it based on our “friend” Tor

Traditional media loves them because they don’t make traditional media think (no head turning involved). Yes, with P2P encryption you can get a limited privacy, anonymity is more vapours, and actually the film knows this, but it isn’t the message, if it was it wouldn’t be Oscar material.

The are a lot of “insane” people in activism and counter-culture, its what makes it exciting, dynamic and affective. However with everything its a question of balance, lets look at how a movement stagnates, fails or growes and blossems.

A short off the top of head list

NGO'ists push limited bureaucratic thinking over everything, they get into bed with anything that can be shaped to their mind set and is fashionably fundable. They take up mind space and squander resources. The vast majority of “institutional” money goes into this.

Encryptionists – service the paranoid fuckists, they have a strong tendencies to reduce usability and create dangerous fantasises of security and anonymity. The are a lot of these as this has been a dominate way of thinking for the last 5-10 years.

Traditional media panderers have there uses for a companion, but soon start to misshape the movement to mainstream agenda’s – hard not to have this outcome.

Horizontal dotcom'sts try to use our movement to jump start their dotcom, fine if its built with the 4 opens, if its not then distraction if  failur and disaster if people use it – so bad outcome both ways.

Insecure and nasty lifestyles are endemic and are attracted like fly's to any successful grassroots project and they are feed by the felandering of the Traditional media panderist – this can easily tip into being a movement death spiral.

Hidden careerist are good for movement building as tend to be the competent ones, but start to drift to NGO and media philanders to build their careerer rather than the grassroots movement.

Paranoid fuckwists are the bedroock of most grassroots campines and in small doses help hold things together, get to many of them in places of responsibility and you have out of control infighting.

Dogmatic liberals are lovely people, but a strong force for blocking sustainable alternatives, its imposable to meditate the breakdowns with a few of these at the core of any counter-culture.

Now for a corresponding “good” list of activist “insanity's”

On this subject it helps to be a bit "mad" to stay in grassroot movement for any leaghnth of time

The hand's off NGO's the is a long (hidden) history of healthy NGO/atavism synergy

The user focused KISS per2per'ists are working on the uphill project of (re)booting the open web.

Traditional media outreach'sts are promoting grassroots media and technology by linking it into traditional media narratives to build the world rather than misshape it.

Horizontal dotcom's are working on “open” federated sustainability rather than closed client server “solutions”

Lifestyles are though opening up in the campaigning lifestyle flow and learning to let go and build healthy connected lives.

Open careerist, are bootstrapping the campaign while bootstrapping themselves, they take the open energy like a trosion horse into the belly of the traditional beast. Some one has to do this...

Secure organising crew is everyone job to keep it carm and focus, and help out with the very real “offline” security and communication that activism needs.

Liberal liberals the calm and the balance of “common sense” that’s needed to keep things from going horribly wrong.

Activism is a dynamic and crazy place full of “insane” people doing fantastic things, its a balancing act to hold it all together, to much of the top and not anufe off the bottom and it quickly slides into something few people wont to be involved in – then disappears with little trace.

DRAFT

In the last few posts I have looked at a failed organising strategy realmedia gathering, outlined a positive way out of this failer, the focused unconfrunce. But for wider understanding I think the content so far is lacking some background, lets look at an old post http://hamishcampbell.com/en/home/-/blogs/the-21st-centery here I outline how we ACTURLY organise alternatives rather than how we pretend/think/do, this is important for a good outcome.

Grassroots as it's very nature is small, we grow from this smallness like grass, savannah and wide plans, we have loots of entwined grass's making up the whole. From this distributed and federated ecosystem we compete with the monolithic traditional corporate media.

The link above highlights the ways we organise, only 3 have rarely good outcomes:

Open affinity group

Opaque affinity group

Invisible affinity group

The top is the best, the bottom for its limitations still works, the top is the hardiest to hold in place, the middle the longest lived, the bottom the easy fast/transitory root to social change.

With this understanding in mind, how are the all important affinity groups formed?

The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination http://www.labofii.net/ spend most of their time forming such groups

Good squats form them, most successful direct action grows them like weeds.

The can come from workshops like LOII which lead to direct action, or from repeated direct actions. They can come from long term working relationships, affinity springs from people interacting around and in places of action, try to do something together and you will know who you have affinity with.

How would we use this knowledge to kick start the (re)growth of alt-media?

* We don’t organises speaker events with top down platform speakers – this is deadening.

* We don’t organise passive workshops were knowledge is thought one to many.

You seed events, with questions and processes then grow DIY

What we do do is get people to do practical things together were ever possible, most useful outcome happen from chopping vegetables in the kitchen than at a big hall event.

We have go rounds at the beginning, middle and end of every workshop were feasible. This is to bring confidence, but most impotently to allow each other to hear each's voice/sense and sensibility repeatedly over the weekend.

The practical workshops are were the afererty is formed into connections then networks.

Cross fertilisation is needed for grassroots growth this like pixie dust can be liberally sprinkled by thouse who have an art (hart) for it over the weekend.

The weekend will plant seeds, some will grow some will fall on fallow ground, the ones that sprout should be watered with publiserty, conections and funding.

The event should be rinesed and repeted in different areas/diffrent groupings and lifestyes etc.

The whole organic network is then held together by a the 4 open on the web. Do not fall into the trap of failbook at this point.

This is the first time I have seen tredtional media talking about this http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/01/26/why-do-managers-hate-agile/

This is the same model as my engine, have to service it:

* Change oil in engine and gear box

* Drain and flush though the coolant and replace.

* Replace oil and fuel filters

* Check fuel tank for water

* Tighten alternator belt

Have the oil and fuel filters ready.

Humm need some help with this as have little idea of engines.

DRAFT

A series of un-conferences - focussed weekend events.

Intro to the event

Un-confrunces are called for a reason and are about a subject, generally with an idea of an outcome.

Invite all the existing groups and most importantly representatives from past groups to tell their stories and outline their ongoing projects. Invite groups from outside the activist/NGO ghetto such as London JAVA and hackspaces and many more etc.

The preamble:

Our culture is broken. Start with these two critiques of the failed grassroots media/geek culture and the failings of the NGO solutions to such issues.

A defining of open industrial standards and federation, a look at peer to peer and client / server.

This intro is to set the atmosphere of the event, to increase group feedback that question these streams in the workshops over the weekend.

When people arrive, a brief over view of the event and goto it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference Then everyone has their workshop/say.

The event would tend to split into 2 streams, Media Creators (story tellers) and Geeks (tool builders). “We” as the “organiser’s” would continuously gentley push to keep the streams entwined as they both need each other and need an emulsifier to combine for any length of time.

The outcome would be wide, we have a note taker (strait to public wiki) and audio recorder for each session (uploaded soon after)

What I would think important is:

* how to make media so it is part of a flow, rather than for a silo.

* Importance of linking, just getting this working would be a big step forwarded.

* using the corporate dotcoms as dumb pipes – not original sources – build peer pressure here - no sin by only posting to failbook and bird seed world.

* recognition of the problems with the widespread use of WordPress as top sites, fine as a blog/source, disaster as top down centre controled group/campaign site.

* importance of seeing media production as a production of media objects to be shared across the expanding network – not to be held as lost in personal silos or spent purely in the dotcom world.

* recognition of the danger and damage from closed (encrypted) working practices in activism/being pushed by some NGOs. The positive possibility of open working on the open web. Encryption has a limited role, encrypt everything is a clear and present disaster and the people un-reflectively pushing this need reasoning with, then pushing off a cliff ;)

At the end have report backs based on the 4 opens. How do the projects/groups meet these.

Concrete outcome:

* Get everyone to front page link to at least 3 complementary groups.

* Get peopule to review alt-media projects based on the 4 opens to spark off wider social debate.

A list from our perspective on good outcomes:

Put out the (existing) visionOntv video embeds, sign up some more moderators – they are a semi working example of the world we want to create.

Look at the newsflash, linking embed and funding site projects.

Find non-loon geeks to help build out the OMN tools, make links to other projects view the tools and micro formats

nourish a non sectarian single sign in for activism and beyond (look at https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm)

A geek view of this world

Am going to link to some existing “complex” projects that overlap to THE OMN “KISS” project, examples:

https://tent.io/docs is the same project, just too far forward to be adopted, that is its not based on the past so would need to much of a jump to adopt, this is why we use RSS as that steping stone.

http://scripting.com is working from a “single user” perspective on very usable micro formats and standards-based projects. The technology being ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js and RSS) used has good peer to peer strengths.

https://indiewebcamp.com same project but again from the “libertarian” camp, making it of limited use for outreach beyond this camp.

Just about all the parallel projects are about individuals first and groups second. For our more communitarian project we need to tweek/expand these code bases to make them useful. Also there is a strong geek start-from-scratch approach which means that their projects cannot lead any change but could become part of the change as it flows. We need to be the flow, otherwise we are all standing around in puddles – the sate of alt-media today.

Draft

Firstly I don’t have any ill will to the people I know organising this event and would love it to succeed in being a part of the kindling to (re)light the fire of alt-media.

But we have 3 main problem groupings/failures blocking grassroots media (culture) from re-booting

Lets look at how they manifest as negative (can do a positive post on this subject, just ask or look back on my blog)

NGO “culture”

Geek “culture”

Activist “culture”

They all manifest in the upcoming Real Media Gathering, lets use this as an example and look at each in turn.

NGO thinking is a malaise that is filling the vacuum left by the catastrophic failings of Alt-geeks and activist spiky/fluffy debate separation. What is NGO thinking? Well in short its the way you HAVE to think to have a continuing payied careerer in a NGO. It in body’s bureaucracy, (respecting) hierarchy, endemic narrow liberal thinking or at the most radical rigid utopian process – leading to deadening bureaucracy.

Geek culture is dealt with here

Activist culture at its worst is bound by life style, the things you do tobe an activist, that looking/sounding/acting like the change is more important than being the change. Some of the people involve understand this, they are just to lost to take a way out of this malaise. This can manifest as a diversion between spiky/ fluffy and a ritualistic on/off spiting contest between these two mindsets. Change is often lost in this.

How do these manifest in the upcoming real media gathering/movement.

The headline main day of the event is made-up of top-down speakers repeating all the things people already know. For a grassroots gathering this is clearly problematic, think about it for a minute ;) This is how a NGO would organise a “grassroots” event.

Geek culture, the is a tech project going on in parallel with the gathering – its happening in darkness with no knowledge, input or interest. The outcome is likely a black box designed by geeks, now we know for a fact that this NEVER ends well. This is how geek's like to work, just trust us.

Activist grassroots culture is high on the banner header image but no existence in the headline speakers and a shadow in the workshops. They do have a little documented day after for this. No sparks and no rocking the boat, this comes full cirecal to NGO thinking were we started.

The have been a serease of these “NGO” re-booting activism conferences and gatherings over the last few years. I helped to organise some of them for my sins.

Much of the content of the event is fine, the workshops have content, what it lacks is any spark to light the needed media fire. Rubbing the damp sticks of NGO together isn’t going to do it, we need to break out of this malaise, and it's easy to do.

I was at college in the years that the old grant system was faded out to be replace by student loans.

Honours Student Lone 1994-1996 and Erudio Student Loans in 1998.

After I finished the course in 1999 each year you had to fill in a deferment form which needed accounts doing if you were self employed, a letter from the firm accountant if employed, or stamping by the jobcenter if unemployed. This was bureaucratic necessity... but for me this was made more complex by the fact that my loan fell between two different loan companies. If one was deferred then the other was also deferred for the year, but the two companies did not talk to each other for some reason in my case and this was not resolved for more than 15 years.

The Honours student loan company and Erudio Student Loans are the two companies. Every year I have had the same problems with these companies and each year it has been resolved by them talking to each other. That is 15 years of hassle; sometimes by phone calls for weeks at a time. After the same hassle yearly I made an agreement with them that they would talk to each other and synchronise the loan accounts so that the same thing would not happen the next year.

This would allow me to fill in a single form once a year. And each year they failed to make this change they had agreed to do the year before. Each year I would have the same conversations and threats from them and after a lot of hassle the two companies would finally talk to each other and the problem would go away for another year. This went on for 15 years, and each year they failed act to solve the problem after agreeing to do just that.

The loans were up for being cancelled by this time, but in the final year they refused to talk to each other thus, in this final year, they actually went further, the loans had become so much out of sync that the deferment on the Erudio loan was still on going for 3 months – so I was still deferred but they refused to tell Honour student loans of this so I had Honour chasing me for deferment when I was already deferred. I told them to go away and sort this out as the responsibility was theirs for repeatedly not doing what they had agreed to do - synchronising the loan dates.

My response was reasonable - that they had failed to do what they had agreed to do thus it was their responsibility to sort this out. After 5-10 phone calls I put this in writing, they replied with this letter ignoring the point I made:

But interestingly the accounts had finally been synchronised after 15 years :) Thank you for resolveing 15 years of broken agreements and hassle.

And there is still the sum outstanding of fines (charges) and interest while they were failing to do this simple thing. This 6 month backlog and is covered by the 3 months my loan actually was  deferred (by a correctly filled form by the other company) and the is 3 month back dating so I actually don’t owe them anything even taking into account their behaver.

I would like a full apology from the company for their failures and 15 year delay, and at this stage compensation to cover my time and energy. 15 years of 10-15 phone calls and 5-6 letters each year. At a rate of £200 (my day rate), that would be say 2 full days a year for 15 years - that is £3000 in compensation for my time wasted.

Thank you for your time.

Hamish Campbell

Ps. and the fine written off obviously.

The last 10 years activist technology and its supporting NGO's have been pushing the encrypted web as secure form of communication. From the Indymedia network "not logging IP's" to Wikileaks "secure whistleblowing" to numerous encrypted chat and social networks. Not to mention all the corporate dotcoms "solutions" jumbling up the space.

This naiveté working had driven alt-tech into oblivion, by complexity and obfuscation. Has this in any way been worth while? I would have liked to right this up but you will have to make do with the notes - This is a good example summing up of the issue (from SN-493-Notes.pdf)

TOR: Not so Anonymous after all