Tag: failbook

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The OMN an easy project for everyone

Published Date 12/24/16 6:18 PM

The OMN an easy project for everyone

Producer groups have to put in minimal effort only puting a linking sidebar on their site and providing a RSS feed into the network.

These can be:

* Tag based content list “you might be interested in this”

* Tag based site link list “blog roll”

* Tag based video player embed “good films”

Optional: a site can add a badge to say its a member of the network.

What do they get out of it?

Google juice from the wide links back to their website and their content.

Clicks and content audience for all sites of the network rather than just their own.

More commenting from cross site conversations in their CMS comment system

On social media (the #dotcons)

They get a wider sharing of their content to work its way round the FB algorithm restrictions.

More “likes” on their #failbook pages to help boost the 3% organic reach.

Well a warm fashernista feeling of being part of something whole/bigger.

A geeky feeling of doing something real geeky.

We join together to push the “undercurrents” up and into the “mainstream”.

Badging the OMN

Is based on the to get a badge a site has to embed at least one linking embed somewhere (relatively) prominent on their site to become a member of the network. The Badge will link to the OMN project page, maybe this could have a list of OMN sites, as well as hosting the basic project docs.

Gold – 4opens

Silver – 3opens

Bronze – 2opens

We need some one to design these “badges” its up to site owners if/were they use them.

The OMN is a project of the 4opens and the PGA hallmarks.

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You do all know that posting polatics on failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness

Published Date 12/20/16 9:20 PM

You do all know that posting polatics on #failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness. Please stop and do something more usefull.

We have a clective Liberal fantasy in the is an idea that #dotcon can be social useful. Its not what the money (billions) was invested in. They “invested” into a silo/portal for capturing data and capturing users. Letting this “value” free is a liberal delusion in the sense it dues not payback for investment. Your talking an act of enlighten philanthropy or old fashioned nationalization to keep the value for the people who created it – the users.

We now have a problem that most of our best alt media producers are children of the #dotcon and have little or no understanding of the #openweb We need to express positive views of value. #linking #4opens etc all very basic stuff and not hard to do. I wont practical open ideas on were to start on this.

#moveon

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Why do I call Facebook a dotcon

Our current online tools (for example Facebook) were built out from the worst parts of human nature. The challenge facing us is can we build out tools from the best part of human nature (an example would be the OMN) I think this is a nice challenge to have.

Its interesting to think about what shapes the small part of the social flow you see on #failbook and see how other agenda’s dominate what you see as a personal experience.

2) The ego of the CEO and heads of engineering and marketing at Facebook.

3) The agenda’s of the investors in Facebook – this includes front company’s for the intelligence services of the US and many very rich people.

4) The agenda of the advertisers that pay Facebooks bills. The agenda’s that all the above do not wont to push – this is semantically hidden by “we cant sell adverts next to your content”. That is “this is not social engineering”.

5) Anything published outside Facebook silo/portal is pushed down and things published inside Facebooks walls are pushed up. An example of this is that Youtube videos are not always embedded any-more and that #failbook videos are and auto play.

6) The people you friend on Facebook. But this is not unmediated the people who are a better fit to the first 5 points will be pushed more visible than thoughts who do not, who will be pushed down out of view.

7) Your likes and interactions will help the algorithm choice from the “advert friendly content” in your wider feed and push these posts into your news feed.

8) Facebook is clever evil, the algorithm is elastic, you can push it and it will bend. Of course evil cleaver wants you to do this because it learns how you push and how to push you back to shape the above first 5 points.

9) Clever Evil 2 that Facebook will also push though content that it cannot necessary monetize but has the intent to addict you to taking the phone out of your pocket to check every spare moment.

10) Its not only about cats and family photos it about reshaping the world so that Trump and Brexet can happen and we are powerless to do anything about this. All we can do is empower the enemy by feeding it knowledge on how to empower Trumps and Brixets. Shake and repeat, shake and repeat, shake and repeat, shake and repeat.

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Draft user storys

More OMN user stores

Tabs Troughton Richard Hering John Hoggett Thomas Barlow can you guys have a go at writing versions of these that are readable by normal people – then I can geek up the originals so they outreach to both worlds. if you wont to #reboot the media this is one way to play a role.

Here I look at wider uses than just alt/grassroots media.

Lucy has an old inactive blog about horses, since #failbook came along almost all activity has moved to a page on this #dotcon but fewer people are seeing her photos/posts and she is annoyed by the nagging adverts asking her to pay for distribution. She likes going to evening classes and sees one on blogging after her art class. Signing up she learns about this new thing the Open Media Network, during a practical part of the class the tutor gets the students to help each other add a “blog role” sidebar to their sites using OMN tools adding a few tags she soon has a list of local horsey sites and blogs linking off a sidebar widget. From this class she finds a group of new proto-blogers to help each other out, they have regular social meetings in her kitchen and after a few months they setup a local news site/noid linking all there blogs together.

Jim is a librarian who has always been interested in counter culture. He has spent the last 10 years collecting all the leaflets and pamphlet he can find on road protesting, climate change, GMO’s ect. One day he goes to his favorite activist news site and finds it offline. Asking around he find that the has been a problem with the server and nobody knows how to reboot it as the volunteer sys admin left 9 months ago. Because of “security” the is no working backup and the only redundant files are on an encrypted harddrive that nobody remembers the password for. All the work and connections of hundreds of people have been lost as well as the archive of media and articles going back 10 years. He had been to a public meeting about the OMN a few months ago and had been interested in how it could be used to create DIY backups of articles flowing through it. Setting up a noid/site is still complex so he has to get some atavist geek friends to help, after a few days its up and running and actively crating a data base of all articles flowing through the network with the tags he choices. In this if any site goes down he, like anyone, can have the full text backup. As text is small he can hold millions of articles on a cheap server and manages to set-up himself a RSS reading app to copy this taged flow to his local computer just in case he has server issues like his now defunct favorite activist website. From this experience he becomes an expert on open data flows.

Jasper is a fashernista geek looking to make a iphone app, he see news as a growth area, as a programmer he has no knowledge or skill producing news content so he is looking for existing sources he can find and use. Being a talent programmer he quickly knocks together a “cover flow” interface with a tag highlighting linking structure. He fills his app with content from a mainstream OMN aggregater noid and highlights the tags in the text to give a interface on this data flow. As his app is tool which data freely flows through he can sell it for $2.99 on the apple store. After a number of good reviews he sells 100,000 installs which allows him to give up his day job in the local council tax office.

Tabs wrights an opinion news blog with hart-warming storeys covering powerful social issues. Currently she has few readers as her distribution is to friends on #failbook. She has known about the OMN since before it started booting up and her content was added ver RSS by one of the founding aggregaters. Since then she has seen her viewing figures more than double, encouraged by this she puts a sidebar widget displaying OMN content flow that interests her. With this in place a number of prominent sites feature her blog as she is now a part of the OMN, her viewing numbers go up by a factor of 10 and keep growing as the network expands.

Ana loves her cat pixi and wants to set-up a blog with photos and life stories she could set-up a tumbler blog like everyone else, but her friend told her about the OMN so she set-up a wordpress site and adds her RSS feed to the OMN aggregater Catlovers in this her posts are added to the OMN network. To make her blog more interesting and dynamic she adds two OMN widgets to the blog sidebar the first is a photo widget that she configures with tags “black and white” “cat” “fun” so that it has an updating image from the catlovers view of the OMN and the second is the latest articles headlines from this catlovers site view.

Janice has a family history website that she updates regularly. The is a group of history web sites that have setup a OMN aggregater to push out there content to a wider audience, Janice adds her RSS feed to this aggregater and the hits on her site jump immediately each time she publishes new content. She gets help to add a sidebar section on her site with a OMN flow based on the tags “family history” and “research” with this in place she become a member of the OMN and her site becomes more visible to people. She finds her self working with a group of interesting people.

Fabo has a bus in East London converted into a restaurant, he currently has a Facebook page but this only reaches a tiny number of people (3%) who like it. He is a member of London Hackspace were he goes to a workshop on booting up the OMN. Inspired by this he decides to set-up a (OMN) aggregating site covering events and food in East London, he gets a friend to do this for him using drupal and the OMN plug-ins. After spending an evening adding RSS feeds of all the restaurants and venues he can find. The next morning he has a website linking to content that regularly updates. He features his own content on this to promote his business, his site after a bit of design work becomes a place to find out what is happening in fashionable hackney.

Jeff has a band, he used to get contacts for gigs on myspace and more recently on facebook, but this had been drying up. He has a friend who is setting up a OMN aggregater in Manchester linking to the music seen. Jeff helps them out by becoming a volunteer tag moderator of the data flows, from the inside knowledge of these rich data flows he rebuilds personal connections that help to re-spark his music.

Feedback please.

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Human beings are by nature social creatures we link

“The Ring slowly but inevitably corrupted its bearer, regardless of the bearer’s initial intent. For this reason the Wise, including Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, refused to wield it themselves, but determined instead that it should be destroyed. The corrupting power of the ring was apparently stronger on individuals more inclined to evil and selfishness: it took almost immediate hold of the greedy Sméagol as soon as he saw it, and corrupted Boromir after a few months of near proximity, while its effects were only starting to be seen in the well-meaning Bilbo after his 60 years’ possession.”

On the #openweb the creation of blogging makes personal sites with in reach of a majority of people the balance between community and individual began to shift. Blogging was about empowering the individual, many geek/fashernista attempts to rebalance this failed, as each tended tobe an island, mirroring the individualism of the blogging network they were trying to link. Blogging declined into silo/portals with the growth of SEO and the resulting failer of linking that resulted from this.

In the openweb nothing stayed static, the first to secsede in this bringing the social (community) back into this world were the first #dotcon ‘s and the most powerful grew from the worst parts of human nature:

“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring

This is the shadow of the role of #failbook currently on the #openweb

How to recover from this “capturing of the commons”? One step would be to #reboot the last steps of the #openweb by fixing the balance between individualism in blogging and the community of the human condition. This is surprisingly simple to do, we need to fix the failer of geek/fashernista linking and thus #reboot blogging as a core to the #openweb. Almost everything we need to achieve this already exists, its a question of an affinity group kicking it into motion. Who is up for building links?

Let the web of trusted links grow (as this is ALL THE OPEN WEB is) and let the data (#4opens) flow over these links. From this trust building community comes back into both the online and offline worlds.

And if a Dark Lord (Mr Zuckerburg) and his minions (Mr Trump) offer you a shiny ring – don’t take it.

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Some thoughts on the OMN idea

Published Date 10/14/16 2:15 PM

You would have to be very out of touch not to see that echo chambers are inherent to #failbook and historically less on #twitter though they have changed over to a algorithmic time line you have to opt out of. The OMN is only moderated by humans. It has a built in “market” that rewards trust thus actively builds out human networks. Groups that link will grow, thoughs who do not will slide back as others move forward.

Arrogance & Ignorance and how to get past this blocking is the issue. You don’t overcome A&I that’s not an option. But getting round it is well possible. The OMN is built on the human condition of trust and serendipity. Both hard human sells, but both the only values we have if your not up for shooting people dead to get your way.

Echo chamber is just a #fashernesta word for feeding prejudice in this it’s the same as buying a tabloid in the old days or listing to R4 and only shouting at the radio when you disagree. The OMN opens – echo chamber closes. Of course we understand that “open” is not a solution, but it is better than closed…

Its easy to misses the point about “open data” you don’t have any control of the machine network that the #dotcon work with. And if you understand the issues with geeks you will likely never have power over complex digital tools. The way out of this is in the this “forces” the geeks lose of the power they desire and need to be motivated. In this you have a riddle which is not solved by logic – maybe solved by emotion? The OMN cannot be built with logic, It might be able to be built by emotion. I think this is likely the root of many missing understandings? You can’t stop the geeks/fashernista desire to fuckup but the is hope of mediating it with the #4opens that’s about it.

The are issue’s with algorithmic options in general “who guards the guardians” the #4opens are a safety feature that the #dotcon will remove. You would have to be very deluded to believe that #failbook works in a society sense no matter what individuals say, you should know this.

The Q. Is how to get a KISS project past alt apathy, geek complexity and fashernista… well just fashernista… #fashernesta = “stupid individualism” if your reading my older posts.

Part 2

Am more a #fuckup rather than #conspiracy type of guy but the lack of linking is a clear issue to be addressed.

The data, it’s a soup, the sites are just spoons that dip. You get to choose by linking were the value is. Every one can have a spoon if they like (but talent will out, some spoons will have more value than others) so it’s #4opens to linking and content. A silo is a single site like #failbook and the sites listed in this post. On the web the value is in linking content is just something to link to.

Silos host/horde content, if they don’t link they have limited value.

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Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt grassroots media

How meany sites link to anuther alt/grassroots media sits. from this list of 38 UK sites only 2 link to anuther site.

Many people find it hard to understand the underlining understandings that push projects based on flow and linking such as OMN and openweb. Here is a short list of activish projects.

Silo

Is a place for holding/hoarding closed data – this is used by the #dotcons to extract funding form “free users” when mainstream/alt silo projects finish, as 99.9% do, the data varnishes and is lost, and in this the effectiveness of any alt building is diminished. Silos do not use open licensing for content re-use. Just about every alt/grassroots media project is a silo. It’s about capturing data. Its obvious that this is a unthought through issue of “churning”

Portal

Is an idea that you can be the big one, all the small fashionista websites aspire to be the big one and by doing this they are working to the logic of the #dotcon and working against the logic of the openweb. They are building a project to lock there users into their project. Portal and silo are overlapping (but different) ideas for building web projects. In the mainstream, Apple is a prime example of this working. In the alt/grassroots almost all alt/grassroots media projects are portals. It’s about capturing users, just as silos are about capturing data. For a left wing group this looks much like “recreating the Soviet Union” the one party to rule the state.

Dotcons

Are for-profit data silos in the old days working as portals, more recently they are building out siloed networks as a pseudo networked portal. Its both sad and bad that many alt media projects unthinkingly aspire to be #dotcons

Link

Is where ALL the value is on the open web. Without links content has NO VALUE. This is a obvious statement, its hard to understand the the lack of understanding around this simple thing.

RSS

Is a grassroots web standard that is still at the base of many of the dotcon world but is being pushed into the background of the openweb by building silos/portals in the grassroots/alt. RSS is like an open LINK with added data,  thus adds value to the web. Its a powerful open tool that we still have. An API is like a geek control freak super power of RSS – the problem is in the complexity/control freak bit…

Geek

A subculture that is control/obscurity and more recently technical solutions to trust (wraparound right) this has always been a closing force on open projects.  This helped to strangle the original successful alt/grassroots media projects and is pushing for the shrinking of the open web.

Fashionista

The unthinking desire for new/innovation/conformity. A wider subculture that churns the growth of alt/grassroots so little can grow beyond seedlings.

NGO

Are greedy dispoling of resources both human and money. The liberals that use bureaucratic funding to push out the geek/fashernista agendas over alt/grassroots projects. These are uneasy friends and clear (invisible) enemys.

Network

Is both a technical thing of wires and frequency and  an understanding of mutual aid and of “diversity of strategy”. It’s native to the openweb and should be at the base of any alt/grassroots media project. In the closed #dotcon the widespread use of A/B testing is a pail controlled shadow of this.

4opens

wikipedia is an example of this. It’s basic stuff open source project stuff. LINK

 

Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt/grassroots media. Do sites link to other alt-media projects? Do they support/display openweb standards (RSS)

First DRAFT (please message me with corrections/info)

the canary

http://www.thecanary.co/

Has a RSS feed, regular updates, copyright group silo, it has no outside linking

Reelnews

http://reelnews.co.uk/

UPDATE: site back online, no visible RSS but can find a hidden one. Its likely copyright and a silo.

(Their website is hacked/down so posted the #failbook link used to have RSS and regular updates. Anyone know what’s happening? Update they hope the site is back online soon.)

Real Media

http://realmedia.press/

UPDATE: website back online copyright, no visible RSS feed but you can find ones. Its a a bit of an aggregater but has been suffering from poor spam control. Its pretty much a portal/silo – but could be more.

(They used to have an interesting website for the tec used, but it ended up being just a silo, they look like they are rebooting? Maybe a another silo? we shall see.)

Update they are rebooting as a linking site, lets hope its not a silo.

Novaramedia

http://novaramedia.com/

Has regular good content, RSS, they are a product of the #dotcon social media wave and good at it. Copyright/CC is not stated. The site is a silo with no outside linking

Counterfire

http://www.counterfire.org/

No RSS feed, starting to look a bit “old left” regular updates, no copyright/CC notice. A silo with no external links

The Bristol Cable – Bristol

https://thebristolcable.org/

No visible RSS feed, it kinda probably tries to obey the 4 opens maybe. It’s a WP blog site in this it’s a media silo with no external links.

Port Talbot Magnet

http://www.porttalbotmagnet.com/

no visible RSS feed, it mostly fails the 4 opens due to copyright, data and organising. It’s a WP blog site, in this it’s a media silo with few if any external links.

 

New Internationalist – based in Oxford

https://newint.org/

Has RSS feeds, it kinda passes the 4 opens using a CC licence for its content.  It links to the visionOntv project.

 

The Ferret – Scotland, based in Edinburgh

https://theferret.scot/

Looks like the old media transitioning to the new media. No visible RSS feed or copyright/CC notice. Is trying to be “open process” looks like a WP site.

 

Strike! – based in London

http://strikemag.org/

looks like a archive of a print mag? Has a RSS feed 🙂

 

Positive News – based in London

http://positive.news/

Dated looking site, hard to read, no RSS feed and a copyright notice. A silo.

Slaney Street – Birmingham

http://www.slaneystreet.com/

Did not load

Manchester Mule – Manchester

http://manchestermule.com/

 Has RSS feed but last article end of 2015 so not an active site. Probably for fills the 4 opens.

Co-operative News – based in Manchester

http://www.thenews.coop/

Nasty looking site and no RSS, copyrighted, its a silo

Ethical Consumer

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/

No RSS, copyrightish, old looking site.

Marlborough News Online

http://www.marlboroughnewsonline.co.uk/

no RSS, copyright

West Highland Free Press

http://www.whfp.com/

no RSS, copyright, its a silo.

Star and Cresent – based in Portsmouth

http://www.starandcrescent.org.uk/

No RSS, no copyright notice? Its a silo.

 

Morning Star – based in London

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

Has a RSS feed but its empty, copyright, silo.

 

Cambria Publishing Co-operative

http://www.cambriapublishing.org.uk/

publishes paper books?

Zed Books – London

https://www.zedbooks.net/

paper books and online reading lists, no RSS I can see.

Sheffield Live!

http://web.sheffieldlive.org/

copyright, has a RSS feed, looks bureaucratic open.

Blake House – based in London

http://blake.house/

no RSS, fashionable calling card website with out content, probably copyright?

Media Co-op

http://mediaco-op.net/

Calling card website with out content, no RSS, likely copyright.

Ignite Creative – based in Oxford

http://ignitecreative.co.uk/

Calling card website with out content, no RSS, copyright.

Shedlight Productions – based in Southampton

http://www.shedlightproductions.co.uk/

calling card website with out content, no RSS, copyright.

Steel City Film and Media Co-op – based in Sheffield

https://www.facebook.com/SteelCityFAM

its a #failbook page, maybe open?

Trafford Media & Communications – based in Manchester

(mostly a printer, but also do film production)

http://www.traffordmc.org.uk/

 calling card, no site.

 

The Community Channel

Community Channel

The granddaddy of NGO media, no RSS feed, likely copyright silo.

Jammu Kashmir TV

http://www.jammukashmir.tv/

it has content, silo?

Open Audio

http://openaudio.co.uk/

Has a working RSS feed

Inform My Opinion

https://audioboom.com/channel/informmyopinion

Has working RSS feed but it fails in my pod catcher, its a page on a #dotcon?

Mydylarama

http://mydylarama.org.uk/

has RSS feed, copyright, silo?

AMP Worcs

http://www.ampworcs.co.uk/

calling card.

A Television

http://www.afro-media.org/

Half finished calling card site.

Salfordstar

http://salfordstar.com/

Hastings independent press

No RSS, no copyright/CC notice, a silo with no external links.

http://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/

Copyright, no RSS feed, has some old school widgets which might show external links. Its a local news silo.

Corporatewatch

https://corporatewatch.org/

Has RSS feed and CC licence, no external links on front page, its a silo but better than most.

bellacaledonia

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/

Has a RSS feed, its a silo but the is hope for it.

voxpoliticalonline

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/

its a blog in the old school sense, has RSS

evolvepolitics

http://evolvepolitics.com/

its a silo with no RSS and no external links

 

A lot of the original links came from https://www.facebook.com/jdaviescoates

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Where next for grassroots alt media

Published Date 8/7/16 6:07 PM

It’s common knowledge that grassroots media is well F**ed and that #failbook and #twitter are the problem not the solution. Where can we go from here? To reboot alt-media (and play a role in rebooting the open web) we need to create an affinity group to cross the geek/political divide that has demolished our once flowing/healthy alt-media networks.

For a moment let’s look at broad-brush history, The 20th century alt-media was one of offline social movements, where modern (21st century) alt-media is a product of online social networks – the web. Take a moment to think about our years of failed encryption geek projects on the one hand, and, the constant churning of disappearing media silos on the other. The last 10 years have been a wasteland for both the geek and political.

The original internet/web suceeded because it was a stupidly open design, it had no built-in agenda to the network. Lets compare this ”new” for a moment to the pre-internet, the old wired telephone networks had all the smarts at the exchanges and the phones were dumb, it was a centralised hierarchical network. Where the internet had the smarts at the ends, the computers, and the network itself was dumb – a horizontal network.

This turning on the head of 20th century thinking is important to move out of our current lon- running malaise in alt-media. Am arguing the divide between politicos and geeks is feeding a failed fixation on 20th century thinking in that they both want to build systems (both technical and social) where the smarts are at the centre. In contrast we know that in the 21st century it is more powerful to build “empty” networks that connect the smarts at the edges. The word “empty” here gets a lot of negative responses 🙂 This is the touching of the core problem. Take a moment to re-read and think positive thoughts 😉

An “empty” network is a general-purpose network that connects general purpose computers to general purpose people and community. Yes, the tech we need, like the internet/open web has an agenda but it is not sectarian as #failbook and other #dotcoms are, as are our own much smaller alt-media silos. Instead its “open” and “simple” based on “industrial” standards and open working social ideals. This is obvious, but it needs saying, The “dumb net” is completely ignorant of what the user wants to do – just data in and data out. It’s up to the user to decide what the data is. Only “universal languages”, that is data standards, have flow. There is a ridiculous power for change in this obviousness.

It’s not hard to re-boot to escape these 10 years of failure, actually it’s simple. Though it’s not going to happen without a good affinity group who cross the geek/political divide. Message me if you think you have the smarts, skills, tolerance and humility.

hamish@visionon.tv

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The spring OMN The river of news project

Published Date 3/15/16 4:29 PM

Am not going to say anything you probably do not know in this application so will keep it short.

The project has been inspired by the technical work and ideas of Dave Winer (http://scripting.com) and the practical media work and open web projects of Hamish Campbell (http://visionon.tv and http://hamishcampbell.com)

The aim of the project is to play a small part in overcoming the mind space gap that is highlighted on the side of my blog:

“A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, the is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side the is naivety and over- complexity”

Its a no-brainer to say that the open web is failing as more of our mind share is taken up by closed networks such as #failbook and propitiatory “eco systems” such as apple, google, Amazon, Microsoft etc.

If we are to play a meaningful role is saving the commons we all build on we need a raft of projects and more impotently basic infrastructure to help re-boot the open web to push these encloses back. We need to cross the river talked about above, this is much harder than it looks, if you haven’t tried it you probably wont appreciate the difficulty involved.

Rivers, streams and springs and useful metaphors for understanding how we look at “news”.

* The springs are our blogs, our company pages etc.

* The streams are aggregaters based on subjects, our twitter streams and #failbook walls badly for-fill this role

* The rivers are currently our old mainstream media and increasingly the enclosing areas of #failbook and #dotcons.

I have a open standards based project to play a role in building up “news” outside of the #silos and will still work inside the silos so the is little to lose.

The OMN

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Outline of 20 years ups and downs of grassroots activism in the UK

Published Date 11/30/15 3:38 PM

In my expirence the flowering of the #indymedia networks followed by the first years of #climatecamp were the high points of activist culture. The end of climate camp was the low point of activist culture, after this the drift to #NGO and #fashionista was wide and dissipating.

#Occupy was a break in activist culture, it was the first mass “internet first” on the ground manifestation that happened disconnected to the past of activism because of the use of #dotcons tools as prime organising space. The old culture has been discredited by the failings of climatecamp, the new #dotcon tools had been celebrated and used well by Ukuncut etal. Were Ukuncut was a reboot of old climate camp crew, Occupy was a project of the #failbook generation in all its wide reflective madness.

Were are we now? The old left is rebooting with a broken mix of the blairite right and the Stalinist/toxic left both pulling at the radical liberal centre. Alt media content is being rebooted but the network it needs to build, to stop its drift to NGO burn out is missing. The right is ideologically bankrupt and visibly grasping, but stronger than ever.

In activism currently we are full of the biter taste of occupy and NGO worshipping of dotcoms and careerism. The working of the 21st century is potentially different to the workings of the 20th century the are groups, networks and individuals that embody this and a larger group/individuals who fight for the past century working practices.

The “certainties of the 20th century” are grasped in our frail and trembling hands, the first stage of a “network” reboot is to let go of these “certainties” one constructive path to this is to fill in the gaping activist memory hole by looking at what works and what does not. The lost and flailing progressive alt needs foundations bridging this gap to build on.

The IS NO SHORT TERMISM HERE, but the is speed and nimbleness, plenty of fun, creative motivated building to be done. Many of the foundation problems can be built in parallel as a “network” so it can happen faster than most can imagine.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

UPDATE:

Am currently working on two projects to take steps to mediate the issues I outline here:

Open Media  Network (OMN)