Composting the EU Tech Mess: From #NLnet to #Eurostack

There’s an old rot in the heart of European tech policy – and it’s not just from the corporate lobbies. It’s also sprouting from the well-funded, #NGO-flavoured corners of what should have been grassroots. A contradiction that tells us everything we need to know about how broken the current #EU #mainstreaming crew and paths are. … Continue reading Composting the EU Tech Mess: From #NLnet to #Eurostack

Governance, the mess of AI tech-fix paths

Seminar Reflection: Philosophy, AI, and Innovation – Week 6Topic: AI Deliberation at ScaleSpeakers: Chris Summerfield (Oxford & AI Safety Institute), MH Tessler (Google DeepMind)Key texts: Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (excerpt) and Summerfield et al., “AI Can Help Humans Find Common Ground in Democratic Deliberation” This seminar focus is on scaling … Continue reading Governance, the mess of AI tech-fix paths

Telegram messaging app is dieing

Telegram partnering with Elon’s #AI to distribute #Grok inside chats is a clear line crossed. This matters because private data ≠ training fodder, bringing Grok (or any #LLM) into messaging apps opens the door to pervasive data harvesting and normalization of surveillance. This is an example of platform drift: Telegram was always sketchy (proprietary, central … Continue reading Telegram messaging app is dieing

The Mess – If You Don’t Value Things, You Destroy Them

We live inside and meany of us under a system for 200 years, global capitalism, where value is determined not by care, connection, or any collective well-being, but by market logic. If something is not valued in that narrow logic, it is treated as waste. This means that if you don’t actively value the alternatives … Continue reading The Mess – If You Don’t Value Things, You Destroy Them

In that mess lies compost…

The current state of tech and activist culture is messy, but in that mess lies compost. From arrogance, capitalism, individualism, and collapsing hierarchies, we have the material to grow something new. The #OMN is a seed for this. Start by openly acknowledging the systemic failures that have plagued past movements. What we’re composting: The #OMN … Continue reading In that mess lies compost…

Ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – This is a path

Yes, I read the post. And yes, the despair is real. The #openweb is being bulldozed by #GenerativeAI like a forest clear-cut by machines driven not by need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nastyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and dead-end. And yes, I too … Continue reading Ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – This is a path

The mess we make – capitalism and climatechaos

The current extreme inequality between rich and poor isn’t a bug in the system – it’s a feature of capitalism. It’s not just inevitable, it’s desirable for those who benefit from it. The structure is built to concentrate wealth and power for the #nastyfew at the top, while extracting labour and resources from the grassroots … Continue reading The mess we make – capitalism and climatechaos

Tech governance fails, its pastime to compost the mess

The last 20 years of tech governance projects keep missing the mark because they refuse to engage with the real, lived experiences of grassroots activists and community builders. Instead of listening, they fall back into the comfort zones of the #geekproblem: control over collaboration, certainty over-curiosity, code over community. This is further compounded by the … Continue reading Tech governance fails, its pastime to compost the mess

It’s long past time to return to the #openweb, and compost this mess making

We used to run 6 #Fediverse instances as part of the #OMN project – thousands of users across them. Admin/mod work was done by volunteers, grounded in user reports, contextual judgment, and dialogue. No hard rules. Just common sense and solidarity. It worked for 4–5 years. Then came the #Twitter liberal influx – intolerant, entitled, … Continue reading It’s long past time to return to the #openweb, and compost this mess making

From unstoppable slop, to #enshittification, the #FT on the internet is adding to the mess

#Mainstreaming talk about the internet generally completely misses the point, yep, it’s the FT so no surprise I suppose. The actual internet, the one we built before the takeover of the #dotcons, this is a culture of #4opens protocols, stitched together with moth-eaten mythologies and some messy traditions. It was never clean or pure, but … Continue reading From unstoppable slop, to #enshittification, the #FT on the internet is adding to the mess