Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
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
With the hard shift to the right in US tech, Europe can no longer afford to sit idly by in tech development. The myth of neutrality has always been a convenient lie – if we don’t actively counterbalance this hard right shift – we risk watching the #FOSS and #openweb movements collapse, taking with them … Continue reading #NLnet #EU #NGI #NGIzero – Will we get it right this time?
User-Operated Internet Fund “Software is eating the world. Maybe the world ought to consider biting back” let’s talk about the #geekproblem by looking at https://nlnet.nl/useroperated/ With the focus on “Individual autonomy” it gets off to a bad start as the WWW/internet is a group project, made up of meany different groups of people. The is … Continue reading The problem we face with funding – nlnet
In every activist space, grassroots project, every loose collective, you get people who bring mess in the wrong way – sniping, backbiting, constant undermining. Call it ego, trauma, status games, burnout… it doesn’t matter. What matters is, this friction is normal, it’s part of the #mess we can’t avoid. The mistake is thinking we can … Continue reading A fresh look at the mess we need to compost
The internet’s public square is privatised, algorithmically controlled for “engagement” over any idea of truth, and placed under the control of a handful of American corporations with no accountability to European citizens or values. The #Fediverse is the most credible existing alternative – but it lacks the shared infrastructure to function as a native commons … Continue reading Why you should help
This is the open-source – split – FOSS moment for the Fediverse. We’ve seen this before. When “open source” was carved out of Free Software politics, it made the space more business-friendly – but at a cost, the movement never fully recovered from this. The result was a long-term weakening of the social and political … Continue reading Proposal – from #NOAW
I’ve been working at the heart of this space for more than 30 years, funded and unfunded. In that time I’ve seen hundreds of alternative tech projects start with energy and good intentions. Most of them wither on the vine, a very small number flower. After watching this cycle repeat for decades, one thing has … Continue reading A note to #FOSS funders
Human Tech: The Open Media Network (#OMN) is a proposal for human-scale, federated media infrastructure built on standard #FOSS practices and the #4opens: open data, open source, open process, open standards. It does not attempt to invent a new platform. It defines a minimal, interoperable framework for how content flows through networks, in ways that … Continue reading A Minimal, Governable Infrastructure for Trust-Based Media Flows
Human behaviour does not stay the same as groups grow. The instincts that helped small tribes survive – loyalty, signalling belonging, defending boundaries, competing for status, consolidating influence – functioned well within natural limits. In small groups, feedback was immediate. Consequences were visible. Power was constrained by proximity and material reality. But when those same … Continue reading Scale changes everything
DRAFT Scale changes everything as human behaviour does not stay the same as groups scale. The instincts that helped small tribes survive – loyalty, signalling belonging, defending boundaries, competing for status, consolidating influence – functioned well within natural limits. In small groups, feedback was immediate. Consequences were visible. Power was constrained by proximity and material … Continue reading The tension that’s pushed back into the fediverse the last few years
https://nlnet.nl/fediversity Project Title Open Media Network (OMN): Portable Digital Commons for a Federated Europe Summary The Open Media Network (#OMN) is a real grassroots initiative to build sustainable, human-centred digital infrastructure aligned with the principles of the #openweb and the #4opens. To providing easy-to-use, hosted cloud services with service portability and freedom at their core … Continue reading Funding Proposal: Open Media Network (#OMN) – Building Portable, Human-Centred Digital Commons
Across Europe, large-scale “mainstreaming” tech projects are increasingly shaping the future of the digital commons. From infrastructure initiatives to sovereign cloud strategies and federated social technologies, the EU tech stack is becoming more organised, more funded, and more institutionalised. On the surface, this looks like progress. But history suggests that without active counter-currents, #mainstreaming inevitably … Continue reading Why mainstream EU tech funding needs counter-currents, why tech activism matters