Conversations on Compost, Bridges, and the Future

A few recent conversations remind me: we’ve already done the work of building alternatives. Twenty years of grassroots tech, radical process, and messy social organizing. The trouble is, that soil has been hollowed out, scattered, exhausted, and composted into the #dotcons

Our current mission isn’t to “start from scratch,” but to rebuild bridges, spread compost, and replenish the soil. That’s why I keep coming back to this moment, the bridging of the #openweb back into #mainstream via #ActivityPub. This is a rare window, let’s not waste it.

The #SocialWebFoundation (#SWF) and others organizing around this space need to think hard about where the bridges land. If we build only toward control, influence, and safety, we miss the point. The #Fediverse wasn’t meant to become a “cleaned-up Twitter clone.” That path leads us back to enclosure.

We need to keep the messy stuff alive, the radical roots, the collective compost piles, the experiments. Because if our worlds keep shrinking, if we make everything tidy and branded, we lose the alternatives that might save us in an age of #climatechaos and hard-right acceleration.

And yes, some of them do understand, the #nastyfew they ran the numbers, and concluded they don’t have to care. In their calculus, the collapse is survivable (for them). The rest of us? We’re disposable. We need different maths, rooted in care, commons, and continuity.

Personally, I’m tired, I no longer have the energy to push these projects alone. So the next step? Abstract the flows, share the compost, and hand the maps to the next generation. I’m still here to mentor. Still sailing, thinking of writing a book to document the 40+ years of practice that shaped this works

If you want to help build something that actually matters, not just another platform, but a commons, the tools are here. The ideas are ripe. The soil can be restored. Let’s keep building, linking, and #makinghistory.