Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
For 50 years we have worshipped the #deathcult – endless growth, extraction, competition and individualism – and now we are living with the damage that this has done to our society and the living world. The current hard shift to the right won’t fix any of this, it simply empowers the #nastyfew to surf the … Continue reading Grassroots #openweb infrastructure is need for a different future
Building beyond the #deathcult – Our current model of #tech funding and developer agendas is not neutral. The way we fund technology shapes the kind of technology we build. For the last 20 years, the dominant tech culture has followed the same path: This has produced #techshit – technology built because it can make money, … Continue reading Rethinking Grassroots Tech Funding
The #openweb reminds us that meaningful autonomy comes from shared infrastructure, collective governance, and mutual trust. Projects like #OMN are built on this understanding: individuals do not create networks alone; networks create the conditions that allow individuals to flourish. Real freedom grows from commons-based collaboration, not from isolated platforms or competitive silos. What can grassroots … Continue reading The EU opportunity and danger, what grassroots projects can offer
From my point of view, it needs to start from the raw truth: There is currently no functioning grassroots media. Not in any coherent sense. Before we talk about video, storytelling and digital tools, we have to answer the most basic question, one that most people have forgotten to ask: What is grassroots media? It’s … Continue reading Rebuilding Grassroots Media – Back to the Soil
Too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the fake illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps … Continue reading Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths
If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.”It’s “I just write the code.”It’s “We’re neutral tools.”It’s “Let’s keep politics out of … Continue reading Why #NGO and fluffy #openweb tech events should include radical real grassroots projects
The current ecosystem of alternative and grassroots media is too narrow in its imagination of what media could, and should, be. There’s a persistent naivety or, in some cases, a self-serving dishonesty. Many of the most “successful” progressive media groups continue to mimic #traditionalmedia without understanding, or addressing, the fact that they do not control … Continue reading Building Alt/Grassroots Media Networks to Challenge and Widen Traditional Media
The #fashionistas are coming https://yewtu.be/embed/u_Lxkt50xOg? It’s time to become more real before this inflow swamps our “native” reboot, if we let them they will consume it and shit it out as more mess. To mediate this shit storm, it’s time to act, please, feel free to repost these web posts, thanks. To understand where the … Continue reading Rise and Fall of Grassroots #OpenWeb
We recently had an extended and thoughtful discussion on signal between collaborators working on #IndymediaBack and #MakingHistory, a key issue emerged: how should we structure “actors” (ActivityPub identities) in a network where the focus is collective action, not individual performance? This question isn’t just technical. It’s political, and central to the success or failure of … Continue reading Actors, Power, and Collective Publishing: Rethinking Fediverse Architecture for Grassroots Media
We’re living in the wreckage of the old 19th century social order. The so-called Four Estates, pillars of traditional power and authority, which 200 years latter are either rotting from within or already dead. It’s now past time to stop mourning and start composting this. Right now we are doing this at the #OMN we’re … Continue reading Rebooting the Fourth Estate: Building tools for grassroots governance
We do have a good history, with our involvement in #EU digital outreach and policy meetings, but this has made one thing starkly clear, our #openweb is deeply entangled in the process of #mainstreaming, a messy, often co-optative dynamic where grassroots voices are softened, diluted, and redirected into bureaucracy, then in the end they are … Continue reading Mainstreaming: Building Grassroots Balance
For way too long, our digital spaces have been hijacked by corporate interests, turning the internet into a surveillance-driven wasteland where control, profit, and censorship push aside community, useful creativity, and communities autonomy. As a first step to reclaim our media and communication networks, we need to step away from the #mainstreaming mess and build … Continue reading Rebuilding Radical, Grassroots Media