mainstreaming – Hamishcampbell

Q&A on outreaching the fluffy/spiky debate to the fluffys

Have been working with bridging this often hostile divide for more than 30 years in hundreds of campaigns on the ground and online. The best outcome you can hope for is “diversity of tactics/strategy”

It’s a miracle when the two sides can hold this bridge in place, the effect of this miracle is more powerful outcome for both agenders BUT the longer this bridge is held in place the stronger the internal and outside forces push to demolish it – it falls, have never seen a bridge hold for the whole campaign.

The #mainstreaming agender always supports the #fluffy aproch and pushes down the #spiky aproch so its less a question of right/wrong more a question of holding the balance agenst this #mainstreaming pushing. The balance is where maximum power lies. So yes in this forum, and in general, the “spiky” aproch has more “power” than the fluffy aproch simple because its is repressed by the mainstream and meany of the “common sense” fluffy crew.

The “debate” is in this case is a metaphor for action, it’s important to keep both approaches working and hold a bridge in place, so people can cross and communicate between them.

In tech outreach work using the hashtag #geekproblem to highlight the “need for control” that is a clear block and not a solution to the very human mess we are in. We need to build structers/code where we “lose” control of our current #mainstreaming agenders and take “control” by building bridges and holding these human bridges in place, so we can choose different paths.

The project for “governance” i brought here in the first post is a “spiky” aproch to this outcome FAQ link

Yep, best to build tools/process from “lived expirence”. We are swimming in a river of social shit with the #mainstreaming of neo-liberalism and postmodernism that is the bases of “thinking”. Thou these ideology died years ago, the zombies of both are still eating our social brains.

You guys experienced it here, when I came to this well “fluffy” space I was met with a well “spiky” reception. The more dogmatic liberals can often be VERY spiky were the #fahernista radicals are generally kinda “fluffy” in their actual outcomes. Lifting the lid and look at the actions, don’t take what people say at face value, to see the fluffy/spiky debate in action, by lifting this lid you start to build a bridge…

Putting and holding this bridge in place is the start of power for social change/challenge.

I came here because you guys have useful skills to help build the tools we need Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network

We live in a world full of monsters dressed in fluffy clothes

Monsters, scratch our fluff crew, and they turn spiky, repression is a universal human problem to be mediated. The subject of the fluffy/spiky debate – respect for diversity and the desire for debate based on this respect is a core outcome. We need to build bridges.

That is clearly passive-aggressive.

You feeling discomfort… did you read the links and think about what I was expressing or did you stop at the “discomfort”?

Yep, talk about what people bring here, engage, think…

” A. I find it interesting, and revealing, that nobody here actually talked about what the thried was about Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network ”

UPDATE

Good place to start from.

In the 1990’s anti-road moment that grew into the early 2000’s anti-capitalist/antiglobalisation movements. This time solved meany issues in activism/grassroots outcomes. One of these was a way of mediating the blocking of communication we have here. They called it the “fluffy/spiky debate”, note you will only find mentions of this as we are crap at keeping our own history, lets not start a conversation on “our” academics and the crap they feed

fluffy is what we have here – lets all get on and be nice to each other.
Spiky is we have in meany affective activist groups, it’s a mess lets use the tools we have to make the mess less nasty, this will be messy.

The most important part is the “debate” which leads to a VERY HARD idea “diversity of tactics” on the ground and online. The quote above is a small step to this.

A fluffy view of governance Kees Boeke – Wikipedia

A spiky view of governance Online governance – openwebgovernancebody – Gitea: Open Media Network

Both have value, BUT one has more value for existing society than the other as it’s deigned to work in a mess. The other is fine for “calming” situations for small “inward” looking groups

In the era of #climatechaos and the #mainstreaming swing to the right-wing we need to build and maintain bridges that keep respect for the “fluffy/spiky debate” in place.

And most importantly these process need to work in mess.

What do you think?

UPDATE

Remember I have met some of these people. What do you think I should do with these guys, they hid posts 6 times, they permanently removed one post,

They pushed Ad hominem – Wikipedia attacks in meany replys, not just ones.

FINALLY, one of them likely reads some links and posts something that has relevance to what am talking about, and I reply to this very late first step and SILENCE.

Don’t blame them, this is kinda normal, but this takes the fluffy outa fluffy and shows the spiky that is always a part of activism.

As I say this is normal for this group of people

What to do with them?

There are circles in protest and most alternative grassroots movements

There are circles in protest and most alternative grassroots movements. It’s a moment of beauty when a group of people find power and worth in what they are/doing in reaction to #mainstreaming entrenched power pushing over them.

But what happens next has a long much recurring bad outcome, so is worth taking a little time to work through.

Let’s look at #Londonboaters as an example. The group was founded as a grassroots group to push back against the British Waterways enclosure of the waterways as a commons shared by all the vibrant boater community with their strong DIY histories.

This, LB succeeded in doing. But for the 10 years after, it lost its focus and became little more than a way of mediating the decline of the boater community against this every returning threat. As it did/could not resolve these issues, it has come to a head again with the same threat returning.

This time CRT pushing strong agendas, to control boater moorings and movement. With the looming threat the human community focus and the beauty we lost in the downtime emerges anew.

For this renewal the term “CRT not fit for purpose” is as much a defence against our own selling us out, as an attempt to replace CRT with something better, which everyone agrees is a hard thing to do.

In social movement the POWER and ENERGY comes from the grassroots. BUT the management, negotiation, control all too often comes from a small self-selecting group of well-meaning generally middle class people. This often becomes unhealthy when these people push different agendas based on different lived experiences. In this, nobody is inherently wrong, but the outcome tends to become VERY wrong for everyone involved.

In any movement you will have these different groups. The grassroots side will have different voices, the privileged people tend to be more focused on career and working with/for power. They use this experience to become the spokes people for the movement. This is a useful role when they share many of the grassroots agendas. BUT a minority of the most #mainstreaming amongst them will see this as a career move to gain the status they need by negotiating with CRT. In this, the agendas get muddled and in the end almost always are betrayed in “common sense” compromises with power, with these “compromises” inevitably after a time this circle starts again.

“CRT not fit for purpose” is a first step outside this circle – the privileged people negotiating “common sense” look and feel dirty to the grassroots movement. This helps to curb the actions to sell out and the movement acceptance of this messy outcome.

Background: BW was the old bureaucratic government agency who thought live aboard boats were a nuisance that mess up their tidy control of the waterways. This was replaced with CRT who were set up as a thinly vailed charity/NGO structure to privatize and sell off everything… it was the thing to do in the Thatcher/Blair years… it’s a problem now that this neo-liberal ideology is dead and stinking. What to do with the corpuses… CRT is a zombie of a past era.

UPDATE the boater won the issue the day after this grassroots event that inspired this post. CRT backed down and postponed their plans for mooring restrictions for further “consultation”.

“In developing any future byelaws, the CRT must demonstrate that it has taken into consideration the specific needs of all stakeholders, including itinerant boat dwellers.”

From LINK

The geekproblem – humanity’s and science

Coding projects that come from the humanity’s general fail as they are not technically coherent and build out from abstract ideas without real relevance to lived humanity, they are too disconnected to become relevant to communertys of use.

Coding from science tend to fail because they are inhuman, and are built for mashions. They serve abstract ideas based on numbers and thus can reach only tiny numbers of people and can build no outreach social groups of use being irrelevant to “real/normal” people.

Coding from life has a better chance of success BUT only if balanced with a science based discipline and some academic rigour of soiled social thinking

Let’s look at examples:

Knight News challenge was captured by academics and thus has produced a slew of irrelevant projects – the money and focus was poured down the drain.

Diaspora was a pure geekproblem project so found few humans to use it, the resources were poured down the drain.

Mastodon came from a computer scientist but is a human project based on an existing need/use with competent technical agender. It worked and outreached to normal-ish people. Mastodon for filled an existing human need. Thus has real social change/challenge action and potential – we should/need to learn from this.

What has worked for the fedivers to overcome the geekproblem is the copying of existing #dotcons as #openweb tools. This copying has mediated the gap between the humanities and the sciences by taking existing (bad) human technological relationships and building copy’s in the (good) openweb. In clear contrast peoples attempt to build both #geekproblem and academic #NGO tools has (obviously) failed in the fedivers.

We need to build out from this good/bad relationship and nurture the good and push down the bad – while avoiding the pointless ghettos of both geekproblem and academic dogma being pushed by captured funding agenders.

It’s an interesting challenge to have movement on/in. Current foundation funding agenders have been captured by academics on one side and the geekproblem on the other. Capital (#dotcons) funding agenders are dominating and pushing for aristocratic anti-humanistic outcomes and theological neo-liberal group think.

We need to step out of these #mainstreaming flows to push up the good and push down the bad. We are working to do this at the #OMN we’re trying to bring our lived experience (this is always were the value is) to rethink and re-emergence solutions to the old 4 estates thinking:

* The clergy – while being structurally irrelevant are still are at the core of the social condition – belief.

* The nobility – are a dangerous force for social destruction by control and play a bad role at every level, our #dotcons leaders are the new “nobility”.

* And the commoners – are all of us, we need to see this more, our best/worst governance is democratic – we need to embed this is all our social technology.

* The media – is the tools of social control and the path to social liberation we need to chose where we put our power and our intervention in media.

At the OMN we are practical working on the last two – while fighting for humanism is the first and fighting trench warfare agenst the second. In the end it’s a simple path made complex by the forces we are fighting agenst.

The answer is always #KISS the power is always human, the tools #4opens

#nothingnew an old story we are still working through https://theconversation.com/humanities-and-science-collaboration-isnt-well-understood-but-letting-off-steam-is-not-the-answer-92146 today, it’s a good stage to have this conversation in/about #openweb technology.

Privacy and security on the fedivers

Had a lot of conversations about privacy and security on the fedivers recently, its an interesting subject that is central to meany people that I tend to leave to one side. Lets take a few moments to look at this.

Mastodon has only a figleaf of hard encrypted security with normal TLS used by meany sites. It is a #openweb app with no internal encryption for any part of its messaging or content. It makes a big play in announcements about security and privacy but if you think of this as hard coded in any way into the system you have been told a “white lie”.

What mastodon has (like all good #openweb apps) is good social security built on intelligent layers of trust and good moderation tools for both users, mods and admins. This soft security is actually mostly real were the hard-security is in the end brittle theatre as the networks and devices it runs on are inherently insecure.

In this we find the opposite of what most people push in technology, real security comes from social trust, with simple strong KISS tools to build this trust. The current #mainstreaming of trust nobody is a dangerous and stupid idea.

outreaching ActivityPub to the EU – draft

This was an interesting process playing a role to do the document – outreaching ActivityPub to the EU https://pad.public.cat/p/ngi0-ec-activitypub-liaison-presentation-2021-04-19#/13

Good to get an outcome from this:

#activertypub as a cross-platform standard for #dotcons who operate in EU
funding to further this – we would need democratic structures in the #fedivers style to make this real rather than a Eurocratic/power politics dead-end structures.
Is the path with a good outcome – I have been involved in a number of groups/projects that have received Eurocratic money and the outcome has always been sub optional not to say a compleat disaster. I have seen no/little thinking to mediate this outcome.

So on balance good to do this BUT we do need not to go down unrealistic paths.

Am trying to shift the focus so that the story is more “interesting” and “representative” ActivityPub in the EU sense is a movement as much as a standard – standards by themselves have little/no value. If the story comes from the standard it is easy to ignore, and it will be ignored. A movement, with a bit of jingoism (the ActivityPub speck is maybe largely a European thing?) is an easer story to tell/hear.

Good points, the #fedivers while having a good community, as individuals we do tend to act like cats.

Prepping the presentation is going to be a “herding cats” so best to concentrate on #KISS and focus on the ordnance – what do they need to hear.

The second day we can reveal the all to human delight (and worry this brings)

Like the focus on European as this is true – the #Fediverse mirrors the federated European dream and clearly moves away the US tech imperialism (soft power) of the #dotcons something that is a #EU agender.

My thoughts/feelings are pragmatic on a good outcome.

We have a clash of languages and assumptions for example “surveillance capitalism” and the “social dilemma” both come from inside business and Silicon Valley thinking – so they are not good examples to use for an ActivtityPub presentation which itself is COUNTER Silicon Valley thinking and has its own way of expressing these issues. Just use natural descriptive language instead of quoting the terms.

I don’t have an issue with web01 and web02 yes they are not correct, but they do communicate.

The first question is why – It’s a good fit both strategically, in challenging the big US tech corporations dominance and tactically, in it being simple to implement and open to innovation as it is outside of anyone group control and agendas.

But we are unready as a community if a big institution like the EU takes up ActivityPub you can see this in what happened to RSS when it was taken up by the NYT.

#activertypub like #RSS and the #www came out of grassroots movements, they bring world views with them its WHY THEY WORK. Yes the world view are in part incompatible with #mainstreaming, so the is a strong burocratic desire to hide these world views and then push them out of view/existence.

Why work with big vertical organizations like the EU – The bridges, allow our careerists and wona get statues crew a way to cross over to the mainstream to feed. By doing this they strengthen the bridge by adding mainstream value to the bridges.

Then the refuges from the mainstream shitpile have an easy path to get to alternatives gardens when the stink becomes too much to live with.

The bridge shifts out “problems” and “brings” in resources, expirence and skills to build real alternatives.

We need bridges to the mainstream to build alternatives.

Though the process will likely not go well. When dealing with power politics/vertical orgs in the end the grassroots is ALWAYS shafted – it’s the normal outcome they can’t help this behaver. So we need to keep the bridges in place no matter how bad there behaver is, keep calm and carry on – their behaver is shit to shovel for compost to plant seeds to grow a better world.

Am thinking we need more structears “from chaos comes order” rather than “order over chaos” its trust or control.

In the internal process. It’s interesting that people coming into non #mainstreaming projects and spaces then push “common sense” #mainstreaming ways of working and outcomes can’t see that they are creating a problem.

You then inevitably get Clouds of smoke to cover up the mess. When it clears everyone is covered in soot. it’s not a good look for anyone.

We need ideas on how to mediate this without going down the #mainstreaming paths.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/webinar-with-the-european-commission-and-ap-community/1507/179

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/meeting-notes-for-prep-call-ec-webinar-19-april/1567

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/outreaching-activitypub-to-the-eu-are-we-ready/1589/11

A conversation

The children of Thatcher and Reagan are limited in their world views – they have been brought up and nurtured in the neo-liberal #deathcult and have limited experience in the nurturing and socialisation of anything else. Academic and book learning are a poor substitute for evolving in a non #deathcult era, so it is no surprise that they find themselves trapped in the circle of #stupidindividualism

In this #deathcult era, individualism is stupid and individualism makes you stupid. This is a degrading circle that no “self-help” or “whoo spiritualism” can help you to escape.

This manifests like dark “social magic” in many areas:

In social movement we have the take-over of #fashernistas who push “alternatives” aside in their “commonsense” self-interest, building careers and grasping at the illusionists of fame and “influence” they are slaves to #mainstreaming

In tech the #geekproblem has pushed emancipation into darkness. The #encryptionists have dominated alt-tech and the #dotcons of the #mainstreaming path, both are born of this world view and the socialisation that keeps it from sight.

The mainstream is blind in its worship “there is no alternative” for #mainstreaming agendas in this era. Our words and actions are simply spewing shit while the world burns, our ecosystems die and communities implode in manufactured (for profit) infighting #failbook

It’s actually easy to step away from this mess, the issue is: are you brave enough to fall and WILL your community catch you when you do? (both valid worries i’m afraid).

We need hand-holding and most importantly we need alt-social/tech structures in place to build and bind – all human communities are built/bound with/from these structures.

The #OMN and the #4opens are there as shovel for the shit and binding for the community – neither of these have any power but the power you use them with – the steeping and away and dreaming and digging is all down to you and your community.

The fedivers – We need to now not fight like we always do

Let’s look at tech politics for a moment, all technology is based on political and economic assumptions.

The fedivers is born outa “stupid” anarchism

There are a crew pushing for cooperative socialism

The is the #mainstreaming of common-sense capitalism

We have our athoratern side but it has little focus

All of human history has been mediated by struggle around these issues. And what is happening now has a long inhumane history, look back to the Spanish Civil War for an easy-to-understand example.

We keep making HORRIBLE mistakes.

The #fedivers in its decentralization is at its roots an anarchist project, yes we have our remnants of feudalism in ???? As king and a few growing “influencers” princes. What we do not currently have is strong socialist roots, just the crew and structures around #activertypub which touches on socialism and capitalism with a anarchist undercurrent.

We need to now not fight like we always do http://hamishcampbell.com/?s=process and look with open eyes at what to build from. The first #ESF article is a good example of the mess we could be heading for.

#indymediaback is a #openweb project of consensus based radical grassroots journalism

The #IMC project is an affinity group – so we are planing to work through consensus and diversity of strategy to move the project past where it was ripped apart by internal stresses after 10 years of running as a successfully worldwide radical grassroots media project.

To do this we have a #nothingnew policy beyond moving the project into modern standards #activertypub we need to reboot the project with work flows intact. Thus, we are working to this #UX https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network/issues/26 and the original workflows and process.

Of course this can and will be updated as needed, but we have a “chicken and egg” issue that we need a working affinity group/s to reach consensus on where we go. The #indymediaback project is a way of bootstrapping this code/process in #4opens way.

To keep “diversity of strategy” in place we are using the #OMN framework.

Update

What would a non #mainstreaming movement look like.

* firstly it would have to get past meany #BLOCKS that are now common sense.

My action is to jump back in time before these blocks solidified and build up from there. Not a bad idea and will likely work if people embrace it.

* Non #mainstreaming tech is SOCIAL/community and needs to step away from the current geek agenders to have real power for social change.

#OMN project we use the #4opens to build from this.

As with most metaphors (and real life) the definition is not exact

* Fluffy – asking/pressuring for change though the syteam

* Spiky – fucking shit up to enact change and directly and sometime ethically using “violence” to property – not to people.

* Beyond spiky the is WAR were direct harm to people happens – that’s outside the metaphor.

It’s interesting to take a few moments to look at this more.

#XR talks spiky by blocking bridges and occupying spaces, but they do it for a #fluffy agender of asking for change. As we are seeing now with their co-opting into “normal” this has limits on outcomes.

Were #climatecamp invaded the and shut down the direct courses of #climatechaos with some limited property damage – though there were some in the movement that pushed for more property damage, was always “non-violent” to people. Though the police did regular violence to people in return so was a one-sided agreement. This was lived “respect for diversity” and was affective in till the internal process ossified and #mainstreaming moved it to a more #XR agender where it promptly failed.

The #animalrights crew were #spiky doing damage to property and some were not above doing damage to people. These guys were pretty intolerant but got stuff done and seceded in many of their objectives though at heavy personal costs.

In the UK we have not had war in our movements since the Irish “troubles” though the has been way to much state violence around the world in our name.

Q. I remember when people were spiking trees to break chainsaws. Do you think the name came from that?

A. yes the same movement. Spiky in both ways damage to the chainsaws and with possibility of hurting the users of the chainsaws this is meditated by clearly MARKING the area as spiked so sorted “diversity of strategy” #spiky in hand with #fluffy it works.

The problem is often from the dogmatic #fluffy crew collaborating with the police to stop this direct action. Due to the possibility of hurting the people with the chainsaws, this blocking effective action. Not respecting the diversity of strategy.

UPDATE

It’s interesting to look at this more as it’s an example of the success of the “Diversity of Strategises” and also their faillers. Many spiky protesters see protecting nature from commercial logging as a war with the possible injurys to the chainsaw works as exceptable to save nature. BUT in respect for the fluffy side of “Diversity of Strategizes” they generally put up the notices about the spiking to stop the workers getting injured while destroying the trees. A good balance of spiky/fluffy, the fail is the liberal protesters then betraying them to the police as often happens which is a clear non respect for “Diversity of Strategizes”. Possible social/ecological change is thus BLOCKED by this failing.