An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
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
#Musk is a useful example of the #nastyfew: wealthy technocrats wrapping themselves in the cloak of progress while undermining the foundations of any, let alone a just future. These stories and narratives about innovation are a high-tech rebrand of green capitalism, a slick façade masking the same old decaying systems of extraction, inequality, and authoritarianism. … Continue reading Stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives
In activist tech, it’s not the code that makes the project – it’s the people. And if we want the Open Media Network (#OMN) to work, we need to remember that how we build is just as important as what we build. The problem with encrypted chats, let’s get this clear: encrypted chat is great … Continue reading Why Tech Belongs in the Open
We are now past the point where the #mainstreaming crew have effectively given up on mediating #climatechaos. What we’re seeing now is ONLY the performance of action – flashy, expensive, technocratic distraction designed to keep business-as-usual afloat a little longer. It’s no not about preventing catastrophe, or even mediating catastrophe, what we have now is … Continue reading We need to compost lies, to build #4opens horizontal networks
These people are hopeless, in the literal sense of not having any hope. The #mainstreaming of the #Fediverse is happening. You can see it in many “progressive” info flows, where the chattering classes of tech – academics, #NGO staffers, consultants, and developers with foundations or startup ties – gather to shape the narrative. On the … Continue reading Composting the fiendlyenemy’s
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. Name the mess, Then root around It. Start by openly acknowledging the systemic failures that have plagued … Continue reading In that mess lies compost…
Compost, not illusions, is a first step – A radical look at “light green” tech – For a second step we need a useful compost layer for growing native projects, like the #OMN. What we currently have in most so-called “green technology” promoted through #mainstreaming and #fashernista narratives is not ecological in substance – it’s … Continue reading What we need is useful compost layer’s for growing native projects
This spirit of the early internet and #WWW – sharing, remixing, collectively creating – is the heart of what we once called the #openweb. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a space of possibilities, commons, where you could take what you needed and leave something behind, hyperlink by hyperlink. The tools were open – #RSS … Continue reading Enclosure of the openweb
To put this into a social path, scaling is a double-edged sword – it can be both good and bad, depending on how it’s done. So, how do we balance this? The idea is that codebases and networks need to scale just enough, not infinitely, but to the point where they can support a human-scale … Continue reading Scaling federated networks and codebases: A human-centred balance
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
Horizontal people always get fucked over by vertical people. This is normal, why? Because horizontals give away power to build social fabric, while verticals hoard and concentrate power to extract and dominate. Every. Single. Time. And the only thing that makes horizontals work, in the face of such mess making, is shared worldview, which we … Continue reading Don’t be a prat, please try and recognize the roots of issues
Q: People are angry about #AI scrapers and that this is exploiting everything for “free” – our art, our words, our data. But let’s be honest, we’ve spent the last 40 years gorging on “free” content online, music, games, video, writing, without paying for a thing unless forced to with a paywall. Yes. We block … Continue reading Digging over the rot and planting something more real