A century ago, Mussolini’s rise in Italy laid the blueprint for fascism, exploiting fear and weaponizing power to obliterate political opposition. Fast-forward to today, and #Trump’s rhetoric and promises echo this history of mess and lies leading to war. In the closing stretch of 2024, Trump’s agenda to use military force against political adversaries mirrors…
People are talking about this subject
From an Oxford talk I attended recently https://hamishcampbell.com/blavatnik-book-talks-the-forever-crisis/ Governance both horizontal, federated and #FOSS native is a hot subject at the moment. It’s a good time for people to look at this. Over the last 5 years we have been developing the outline of the native Open Governance Body (#OGB) project is an innovative approach…
Hope not hate, in tech
Reflecting on the last 40 years, it’s clear that the trajectory toward #climatechaos has been pushed by the entrenchment of corporate power and increasing capital-driven approach to global challenge. This era, the “neoliberal” era, normalized policies that favoured deregulation, privatization, and financialization. This shift didn’t just allow corporations to thrive; it redefined our social priorities,…
Blavatnik Book Talks: The Forever Crisis
This is my reaction from the talk, have not read the book. In The Forever Crisis, the author presents complex systems thinking as a framework for addressing the world’s intractable challenges, particularly at the level of global governance. The book critiques the traditional top-down approaches that are pushed by powerful institutions like the #UN, highlighting…
Building #FOSS bridges
There is a divide in #FOSS between #openculture and #opensource that is becoming more visible and a significant tension today, with each movement originating from different perspectives on sharing and collaboration, even though they overlap in the broad mission of making knowledge and technology more accessible. You can see this in the AI debates and…
We need to compost the current culture of lying
“We don’t need to talk about the climate, we don’t need to talk about change. What we need to talk about is power and criminality and evil.” Lying as a tool for blocking change has become the pervasive issue, especially when people use it to protect the status quo and avoid facing uncomfortable truths. This…
A “liberal” path to mediate the growing #climatechaos mess
The idea of nationalizing the fossil fuel industry as a climate solution has had some attention in recent years, though it hasn’t yet broken into #mainstreaming policy discussions. Proponents argue that taking control of the industry allows for a managed, planned decline of fossil fuel production, aligned with climate goals and fair treatment for workers.…
Help trolls move out from under bridges to become part of a community
Feeding trolls is not helping anyone, yes, trolls are not all evil, though some are. Trolls are often insecure and inadequate, this can be from lack of respect, a lack of confidence, narrow imagination feeding dogmatic fixation on self vs other, this in the end becomes nasty, when attacking people is used to mask this.…
The victim card, always check who is playing this, you will likely find mess to compost
When people attack using identity, race, sex or victimhood as a tool rather than for dialogue, it reflects deeper social and personal dynamics, feelings of powerlessness, fear of disagreement, or frustration over statues. people resort to this approach to quickly assert moral authority and silence opposing views, assuming that others will concede rather than face…
The #geekproblem might kill meany of us, mediating it matters
#climatechaos, in twenty years, the global trajectory faces a grim reality, #geoengineering will have been attempted, driven by the need to stave off #climatecollapse while maintaining the capitalist path for the privileged. However, its effectiveness is questionable. Geoengineering operates on the linear logic of immediate technological fixes, while our climate’s complexity is non-linear and unpredictable.…
The Activist History of the Web: Lessons we can learn
Over the last few decades, the web’s evolution has been shaped by competing ideals. Early on, we witnessed the shift from the “better” #closedweb corporate controlled paths to an #openweb #DIY explosion—a time when collaborative, decentralized approaches thrived. #Mainstreaming efforts to recapture this #4opens spirit failed for years, but eventually, corporate-driven dot-coms platforms captured the…
Trying to build a bridge
It’s clear there are differing perspectives on whether #BlueSky, now backed by Blockchain Capital, aligns with the values of #openweb or is moving to the #dotcons path. Blockchain Capital’s focus on decentralized technologies includes investments beyond cryptocurrency, yet the question remains about how much this continuing VC involvement influences BlueSky’s direction. In the hashtag story…