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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)

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Q A of the OMN autumn 2015

A DRAFT (copy and paest of a chat useing realmedia as an example)

this needs a edit for sense, but my back ach dusent alow this so out it goes

We need an Executive summery of why visionontv failed.

– we didn’t de-brand fast anufe

– we went nimble anufe to be relaverent.

its going to be a struggle to reboot grassroots media with out highlighting both of these

its fine for brands to be “periphery”

the is no excuse for lack of nimbleness.

We built generations of p2p tech against the flow of failbook and its activist NGO takeup.

Now – we can only aggregate YouTube videos

yes but that’s ok, in the interim, As our tools are broken

If we could spread the realmedia WP install up this would be easer to explain the p2p side of OMN

With out working tools – we can only build proxy sites to hold space.

Youtube play’s list are one

Q. The question is: what can people do NOW

Its a chicken and egg – we have to use the tools we have while making clear the tools we need.

Yes YT embeds are a tool we have – Q. but they should not be attached to the 1400 video account of a particular media project

A. Get embeds from the visionOntv noid of the OMN with an explanation why is far from perfect.

Q. it looks like we’re doing it to promote our work?

OK this is interesting

we’re not, but that’s what it looks like

need to avoid the whole branding thing for this

in terms of the interface, what’s the difference between an embedder (of an aggregator) and an aggregator – is it a completely different UI or a different use of the same UI

Q2: If I as an aggregator like RealMedia’s agregation, it would be natural to merge the two – or why don’t I just add to RealMedia’s? In other words, isn’t there a desirable and natural tendency towards centralisation?

Other way up – as an aggregator, I like RealMedia’s aggregation, minus their videos about endangered animals, so I take those tags out, and become a subset

Then I add a few tags which I think are missing, creating a new and I think better aggregator

but Real Media has a publicity budget, so no one knows about mine….

etc etc etc

Yep to last one, you can create a new aggregated but each stage in the line adds a delay. So Realmedia embeds will update before your one.

Its also based on trust – which you gain by doing.

Why trust a site that is slow and dues not add anything

The can be a badging syteam

I am adding stuff – taking away dross IMHO and adding content

Our site has 233 embeds, imports 124 feeds and exports 23 feeds etc

why don’t we have mother ship that any aggregator has access to?

The new site will have lots of low numbers.

But the same content, 10-20 min to a few hours later.

Q. so the first and biggest always wins?

Only if the put huge amounts of real value into tageing and moderating.

Which had s work. With out that a smaller sight will be faster and better.

why wouldn’t i want to better use my time by helping RealMedia’s or mother ship’s aggregation rather than creating my own?

You can – the is a tendency to specialise thus the will always be a better site than general news sites if you are pashernate (and peopulr who put the work into aggregation will be pashernste)

So Realmedia will likely stay a nich site for its subject – I can’t read it for example.

but why don’t people build their aggregation inside another aggregator?

The OMN has a “market” mechanism of checks and balances built in. Will be very hard to stop geeks “improving” these out…

They can

If the aggregate allows it users (embeds) to retage with no or fast moderation then you can build a aggreater inside an aggreater. Just like we can post our stuff to failbook and theurtube.

If your passionate build your own.

The is a server/bandwidth/moderation cost for every RSS feed you add.

Q. archive.org has a centre – how is OMN different from that plus some aggregation tols?

so it’s about shared cost

And trust and shared passion – the whole is bigger than the parts.

Its a leep for the verticals… Thus the resistance.

Like the open internet

“a leap for the verticals” – Im clearly trying to establish “a leap into what exactly?”

(btw i find realmedia’s content incredibly dull as well!) but i was hyposthetising

ok im going to assume for now that this can’t be explained

This n the 4 opens…

Which is the opens that the regional internet was built on

Original

Portals are pre web.

Education

Pre web is a failed strategy…

no one is thinking pre-web

Q. ok the data soup – stuff gets in there by api?

so it’s add your stuff, and get the ability to filter out other peoples’

ok the aggregator closest to source is best….

closest to the general soup

Have been thinking about this

People think the is a centre yo the OMN that will look after things. The is none.

You are Completely responsible for who you link to and the data. The is no centre to take care of you or this.

The is massive redundant linking and data storage.

The is roll-back if things go wrong

You can put a feed on moderation if you aren’t sure. But this will increase your workload and slow your updates so better to be sure.

Its a trust network.

Trust and risk are yours. The is no centre to meditate this trust

If you can’t build trust then you will have a uphill struggle making aggregation work for your media project.

TRUST

This is the hard jump for verticals.

Imperfection – is. Roll back in a complete failer or retag for a miss step.

Things happen you react to them. Rather than you reside first before things happen.

Its the original IMC of publish then moderate.

Of courses “verticals” can still use it, but they will be slow and plodding.

Just put everything on “moderation” and don’t trust.

Or if your sensible a mixture of the two.

A good site will link well and let the data flow. Tweaking here or their. Unlinking if trust is broken and not addressed.

I find it hard to understand the verticality view point thus dearly directly address it.

Hope the helps, interesting for me to glimps the vertical view

To recap verticals can and will play a roll in the OMN but the exciting sites will be the ones that let the data flow through good linking based on trust.

The latency of layers of aggregation will push sites to specialise in subject – the best sites will be a group of trusting focused sites that each specialise.

Feeding a trusted middle site.

Top sites are easy to build but very hard to add value.

Bottom subject sites are harder to build and add a lot of value.

Easy to add value.

The latency is important as its the driving force to link to the site closed to the bottom you can trust

You can have a easy to site that has perfect content but is late to update.

Or you can have a fast updating middle site on a subject.

I would look more at middle sites

My mum would look at a top site.

Etc.

So to recap the skill in running an aggreater is to link as close to the bottom as you can trust. For you core news feeds then maybe get tag based feeds off middle sites to widen your coverage into full news feed.

A valence of building trust/handling/moderation.

Balance

Archive.org is a top down categorisation of knowledge in a signal place. The is little flow.

It has no need for trust

Its an archive not a news site.

Do you rember the crap conversations we had about the hive website were they got rid if the network and whent vsck to a signal site. That’s archive.org were is the value of a network, its hard for verticals to see.

On the subject of the OMN YouTube account – somebody would be responsible.

Q. With your top, middle and bottom sites, you’re implying a topography, which can be drawn as a graphic, presumably

It’s a hierarchy, without value attached to different ranks – hmmm

Yep the value is nebulous, just like the original internet nobody thought it would work because it had NI identity, no security and was completely based on open trust

Much like early indymedia

Etc.

You could explain the projecting a way that verticals will understand. With moderation though out ect.

No centre/nobody responsible/built on trust

Its a good idea that’s needed and will likely work well

Its hard to understand that the OMN is just open standards… Everything eles is up to the users/producers. The OMN dose/is nothing.

The outcome is a framework for linking, taging and outreach.

The framework is just structure, no content.

Q. so where is the content soup?

Yes it shapes how people cooperate. It Push greed and selfishness to the edges as much as it can

Q. what does?

The framework bounded by the 4 opens.

Its stored across hundreds of sites around the work, its backed up in many university’s, archives and on your local hard rive if you wont it.

World (thousand, hundreds of thousands) and some one in this will keep a surviving backup. Thus nobody is responsible to do it. Though they can and will because that us what some people do

Its KISS

Couldn’t be simpler

Has complex outcomes though…

Just like the internet.

Torrents already do this to an extent. But as the content is mostly stolen nobody keeps it.

Thus is fades.

This is of courses the text content and meta data. The video/audio/images

Would be more complex, a bit more “centralised” but still completely diy.

Can boot strap by yseing wikicomns and aracive.org so can be put to back of mind for s year or two.

Because storing lots of text in a database is easy. Big media needs more work.

Not impossible but hard to boot up the project and deal with it in the same diy way.

So aggregation is text and meta data. Media is still stored on original servers. Can build sine simplistic caching in to keep it running and scaling at boot up as needed.

That become a issue if we are very successful, nice problem to have.

Media storage of video/audio/images are left “more centralised” in partner silos – wikicomes/archive. Just to start otherwise we gave bug technical issues of scaling at the front end.

Keep it KISS

Q.

For example archive can seed torrents so can be the bases if torrent streaming. But that’s later. Just use youtuve vimio embeds to kuckstat. Don’t make people jump to meany hoop to soon. And all thus stuff can run in parreral anyway.

KISS

OMN is much less centralised than torrents. But we keep media in cirpurate silies and friendly NGOs to help boot up.

In that the media will be more “centralised” than torrents

Can do torrents at the same time but s distraction for me.

This idea is based on computers and storage getting cheaper each year so people can host big databases. This is what’s happening.

Thinking. The most underplayed part of the OMN is the 4 opens…

The rest is just KISS RSS aggregation

Q. How do you stop porn appearing on your site. You link to a site you trustvnot to put porn on your site

Hard sell… But visionOntv has and real media have both proven it can be done etc.