Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
Published Date 2/14/15 4:20 PM
This is the same model as my engine, have to service it:
* Change oil in engine and gear box
* Drain and flush though the coolant and replace.
* Replace oil and fuel filters
* Check fuel tank for water
* Tighten alternator belt
Have the oil and fuel filters ready.
Humm need some help with this as have little idea of engines.
UPDATE: have been doing this for the last ten years, it’s not that hard.
Published Date 2/13/15 2:01 PM
DRAFT
Unconferences are called for a reason and are about a subject, generally with an idea of an outcome.
Invite all the existing groups and most importantly, representatives from past groups to tell their stories and outline their ongoing projects. Invite groups from outside the activist/NGO ghetto such as London JAVA and hackspaces and many more etc.
Our culture is broken. Start with these two critiques of the failed grassroots media/geek culture and the failings of the NGO solutions to such issues.
A defining of open industrial standards and federation, a look at peer to peer and client / server.
This intro is to set the atmosphere of the event, to increase group feedback that question these streams in the workshops over the weekend.
When people arrive, a brief overview of the event and goto it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference Then everyone has their workshop/say.
The event would tend to split into 2 streams, Media Creators (story tellers) and Geeks (tool builders). “We” as the “organiser’s” would continuously gently push to keep the streams entwined, as they both need each other and need an emulsifier to combine for any length of time.
The outcome would be wide, we have a note taker (strait to public wiki) and audio recorder for each session (uploaded soon after)
What I would think important is:
* how to make media so it is part of a flow, rather than for a silo.
* Importance of linking, just getting this working would be a big step forwarded.
* using the corporate #dotcons as dumb pipes – not original sources – build peer pressure here – no sin by only posting to #failbook and bird seed world.
* recognition of the problems with the widespread use of WordPress as top sites, fine as a blog/source, disaster as top-down centre controlled group/campaign site.
* importance of seeing media production as a production of media objects to be shared across the expanding network – not to be held as lost in personal silos or spent purely in the dotcons world.
* recognition of the danger and damage from closed (encrypted) working practices in activism/being pushed by some NGOs. The positive possibility of open working on the open web. Encryption has a limited role, encrypt everything is a clear and present disaster and the people unreflectively pushing this need reasoning with, then pushing off a cliff 😉
At the end, have report backs based on the 4 opens. How do the projects/groups meet these.
* Get everyone to front page, link to at least 3 complementary groups.
* Get people to review alt-media projects based on the 4 opens to spark off wider social debate.
A list from our perspective on good outcomes:
Put out the (existing) #visionOntv video embeds, sign up some more moderators – they are a semi working example of the world we want to create.
Look at the newsflash, linking embed and funding site projects.
Find non-loon geeks to help build out the OMN tools, make links to other projects view the tools and micro formats
nourish a non-sectarian single sign in for activism and beyond (look at https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm)
I am going to link to some existing “complex” projects that overlap to THE OMN “KISS” project, examples:
https://tent.io/docs is the same project, just too far forward to be adopted, that is its not based on the past so would need too much of a jump to adopt, this is why we use RSS as that stepping stone.
http://scripting.com is working from a “single user” perspective on very usable micro formats and standards-based projects. The technology being ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js and RSS) used has good peer to peer strengths.
https://indiewebcamp.com same project but again from the “libertarian” camp, making it of limited use for outreach beyond this camp.
Just about all the parallel projects are about individuals first and groups second. For our more communitarian project, we need to tweak/expand these code bases to make them useful. Also, there is a strong geek start-from-scratch approach, which means that their projects cannot lead any change but could become part of the change as it flows. We need to be the flow, otherwise we are all standing around in puddles – the state of alt-media today.
Published Date 2/11/15 4:46 PM
Draft
Firstly, I don’t have any ill will to the people I know organising this event and would love it to succeed in being a part of the kindling to (re)light the fire of alt-media.
But we have 3 main problem groupings/failures blocking grassroots media (culture) from rebooting
Let’s look at how they manifest as negative (can do a positive post on this subject, just ask or look back on my blog)
NGO “culture”
Geek “culture”
Activist “culture”
They all manifest in the upcoming Real Media Gathering, let’s use this as an example and look at each in turn.
NGO thinking is a malaise that is filling the vacuum left by the catastrophic failings of alt-geeks and activist spiky/fluffy debate separation. What is NGO thinking? Well, in short it’s the way you HAVE to think to have a continuing paid careerer in an NGO. It in body’s bureaucracy, (respecting) hierarchy, endemic narrow liberal thinking or at the most radical rigid utopian process – leading to deadening bureaucracy.
Geek culture is dealt with here
Activist culture at its worst is bound by lifestyle, the things you do to be an activist, that looking/sounding/acting like the change is more important than being the change. Some of the people involve understand this, they are just too lost to take a way out of this malaise. This can manifest as a diversion between spiky/ fluffy and a ritualistic on/off spiting contest between these two mindsets. Change is often lost in this.
How do these manifest in the upcoming real media gathering/movement.
The headline main day of the event is made-up of top-down speakers repeating all the things people already know. For a grassroot gathering this is clearly problematic, think about it for a minute 😉 This is how an NGO would organise a “grassroots” event.
Geek culture, the is a tech project going on in parallel with the gathering – it’s happening in darkness with no knowledge, input or interest. The outcome is likely a black box designed by geeks, now we know for a fact that this NEVER ends well. This is how geek’s like to work, just trust us.
Activist grassroots culture is high on the banner header image but no existence in the headline speakers and a shadow in the workshops. They do have a little documented day after for this. No sparks and no rocking the boat, this comes full circle to NGO thinking where we started.
They have been a series of these “NGO” re-booting activism conferences and gatherings over the last few years. I helped to organise some of them for my sins.
Much of the content of the event is fine, the workshops have content, what it lacks is any spark to light the needed media fire. Rubbing the damp sticks of #NGO together isn’t going to do it, we need to break out of this malaise, and it’s easy to do.
Published Date 2/6/15 3:15 PM
I was at college in the years that the old grant system was faded out to be replace by student loans.
Honours Student Lone 1994-1996 and Erudio Student Loans in 1998.
After I finished the course in 1999 each year you had to fill in a deferment form which needed accounts doing if you were self employed, a letter from the firm accountant if employed, or stamping by the jobcenter if unemployed. This was bureaucratic necessity… but for me this was made more complex by the fact that my loan fell between two different loan companies. If one was deferred then the other was also deferred for the year, but the two companies did not talk to each other for some reason in my case and this was not resolved for more than 15 years.
The Honours student loan company and Erudio Student Loans are the two companies. Every year I have had the same problems with these companies and each year it has been resolved by me takeing the time to force them to talk to each other. That is 15 years of hassle; sometimes by phone calls for weeks at a time. After the same hassle yearly I made an agreement with them that they would talk to each other and synchronise the loan accounts so that the same thing would not happen the next year.
This would allow me to fill in a single form once a year. And each year they failed to make this change they had agreed to do the year before. Each year I would have the same conversations and threats from them and after a lot of hassle the two companies would finally talk to each other and the problem would go away for another year. This went on for 15 years, and each year they failed act to solve the problem after agreeing to do just that.
The loans were up for being cancelled by this time, but in the final year they refused to talk to each other thus, in this final year, they actually went further, the loans had become so much out of sync that the deferment on the Erudio loan was still on going for 3 months – so I was still deferred but they refused to tell Honour student loans of this so I had Honour chasing me for deferment when I was already deferred. I told them to go away and sort this out as the responsibility was theirs for repeatedly not doing what they had agreed to do – synchronising the loan dates.
My response was reasonable – that they had failed to do what they had agreed to do thus it was their responsibility to sort this out. After 5-10 phone calls I put this in writing, they replied with this letter ignoring the point I made:
|
custermservice@honersstudentlones.co.uk Hamish Campbell 20/05/64 REF: 6319469992732321 I dispute the arrears on my account. As you can see on my file the reason for current arrears is the failer of the different student lones companies to synchronise their accounts. Yearly I have been repeatedly promised by the student hones lones that this would be fixed so that the same issue would not be repeated but this was never done and each year I would have the same discussions and the same problems. This has been appalling customer service and unprofessional of your organisation. Can you please finally fix this Yours Sincerely Hamish Campbell |
But interestingly the accounts had finally been synchronised after 15 years 🙂 Thank you for resolveing 15 years of broken agreements and hassle.
And there is still the sum outstanding of fines (charges) and interest while they were failing to do this simple thing. This 6 month backlog and is covered by the 3 months my loan actually was deferred (by a correctly filled form by the other company) and the is 3 month back dating so I actually don’t owe them anything even taking into account their behaver.
I would like a full apology from the company for their failures and 15 year delay, and at this stage compensation to cover my time and energy. 15 years of 10-15 phone calls and 5-6 letters each year. At a rate of £200 (my day rate), that would be say 2 full days a year for 15 years – that is £3000 in compensation for my time wasted.
Thank you for your time.
Hamish Campbell
Ps. and the fine written off obviously.
UPDATE
The last 10 years activist technology and its supporting NGO’s have been pushing the encrypted web as secure form of communication. From the Indymedia network “not logging IP’s” to Wikileaks “secure whistleblowing” to numerous encrypted chat and social networks. Not to mention all the corporate dotcoms “solutions” jumbling up the space.
This naiveté working had driven alt-tech into oblivion, by complexity and obfuscation. Has this in any way been worth while? I would have liked to right this up but you will have to make do with the notes – This is a good example summing up of the issue (from SN-493-Notes.pdf)
TOR: Not so Anonymous after all
Our previous coverage:
● SN#70 (Internet Anonymity) – seven years ago, March 28th, 2008
● SN#394 (TOR Hidden Services) – nearly two years ago, March 8th, 2013
● In our earlier “what is TOR” coverage, we primarily focused upon the cleverness of
TOR’s ONION layering cryptography.
http://thestack.com/chakravarty-tor-traffic-analysis-141114
● “81% of Tor users can be de-anonymised by analysing router information, research
indicates.”
● Using weak but pervasive built-in Cisco “NetFlow” tech and deliberate traffic
perturbation.● Perturb the traffic from the server a user is connecting to, and watch the exit nodes’
traffic.
● The point was that even very weak “NetFlow” aggregation was enough. More expensive
“per packet” monitoring and analysis was not needed.
Did feds mount a sustained attack on Tor to decloak crime suspects?
● http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/did-feds-mount-a-sustained-attack-on-tor-t
o-decloak-crime-suspects/
● <quote> Despite the use of Tor, FBI investigators were able to identify IP addresses
that allegedly hosted and accessed the servers, including the Comcast-provided IP
address of one Brian Farrell, who prosecutors said helped manage SilkRoad2. In the
affidavit, DHS special agent Michael Larson wrote:
○ From January 2014 to July 2014, a FBI NY Source of Information (SOI) provided
reliable IP addresses for TOR and hidden services such as SilkRoad2, which
included its main marketplace URL, its vendor URL, its forum URL, and its support
interface (uz434sei7arqunp6.onion). The SOI’s information ultimately led to the
identification of SilkRoad2 servers, which led to the identification of at least
another seventeen black markets on TOR.
○ The SOI also identified approximately 78 IP addresses that accessed a vendor
.onion address. A user cannot accidentally end up on the vendor site. The site is
for vendors only, and access is only given to the site by the SilkRoad2
administrators/moderators after confirmation of a significant number of successful
transactions. If a user visits the vendor URL, he or she is asked for a user name
and password. Without a user name and password, the vendor website cannot be
viewed.
The Internet was never designed to provide anonymity… and it doesn’t.
● True anonymity is extremely difficult to achieve.
● In a high-latency store & forward system it’s somewhat feasible…
● But in any low-latency near real time network, it’s arguably impossible.
Review… What is TOR?
● TOR is a LOW LATENCY anonymity-enhancing network service.
● The original designers of TOR made some assumptions and compromises that are
coming back to haunt us now…
● One academic paper put it this way: “Tor aims to protect against a peculiar threat
model, that is unusual within the anonymous communications community. It is
conventional to attempt to guarantee the anonymity of users against a global passive
adversary, who has the ability to observe all network links. It is also customary to
assume that transiting network messages can be injected, deleted or modified and that
the attacker controls a subset of the network nodes. This models a very powerful
adversary, and systems that protect against it can be assumed to be secure in a very
wide range of real world conditions.
Tor, on the other hand, assumes a much weaker threat model. It protects against a
(weaker) non-global adversary, who can only observe a fraction of the network, modify
the traffic only on this fraction, and control a fraction of the Tor nodes.
Furthermore, Tor does not attempt to protect against traffic confirmation attacks, wherean adversary observes two parties that he suspects to be communicating with each
other, to either confirm or reject this suspicion. Instead, Tor aims to make it difficult for
an adversary with a very poor a priori suspicion of who is communicating with whom, to
gain more information.
The Crypto Model:
● Choose a “circuit”, default is three nodes.
● Negotiate keys with the 1st node.
● Using the first node, get keys for a randomly chosen second node.
● Using the first and second nodes, get keys for the randomly chosen third node.
● Wrap outgoing traffic in an onion from node 3 to node 2 to node 1.
● The onion model nailed it. No one is attacking that. But…
The Traffic Flow Model: (and the Achilles’ heel)
● Deliberate obfuscation of individual packets with random length padding.
● TCP flows are divided into 512 byte cells… And are sent round robin out of the node.
● The power of the global observer
● Much like metadata… traffic pattern analysis is a POWERFUL tool.
● The power of active vs passive attacks
● Being able to “perturb” the flow makes attacks far more powerful.
The extreme power of active assumption confirmation attacks.
● One academic paper: <quote> “Tor does not attempt to protect against traffic
confirmation attacks, where an adversary observes two parties that he suspects to be
communicating with each other, to either confirm or reject this suspicion.”
● IOW — In any near real time network, traffic confirmation is a killer.
Bottom line… *I* would never rely upon TOR alone.
● Consider it, itself, another layer of a more full “Defense in Depth.”
● The dream is that someone can sit at home and be fully anonymous. But that’s not the
reality.
Defense in depth:
● First of all… DO NOT do anything illegal. Do not do anything that you wouldn’t want the
Federal Government to know about.
● Traditional old school & new school.
● Go somewhere as far away as convenient.
● Be anonymous there… Pay with cash.
● Don’t go anywhere familiar, don’t stay long, don’t know anyone, don’t talk to anyone.
● Plan ahead to get in and out. Rehearse for speed. Get it done and leave.
● Don’t do ANYTHING having to do with your own identity.
● Perhaps purchase a cheap laptop just for this. Pay with cash.
● Override your laptop’s default MAC address.
● Use TOR and sacrifice real time performance
● Use widely dispersed global nodes.
● Use many nodes.
●
● In other words… Tor IS useful, but it’s not perfect. So always act as though it’s not.
Published Date 2/4/15 7:48 PM
Lets do some grounded/blue sky thinking 😉
The internet has been (unbelievably) successful because its libertarian/anacist open/trust peer to peer network with very light centre and governances. How do we (re)build an grassroots-media to flourish in the 21st century remains of this open web?
What would an open media network (OMN) look like?
Ps. this actually already exists in part in the visionOntv project.
Peer to peer is the long term goal, but the whole internet is now largely based on client server and alt-geeks love control, so let’s take a half first step from this spot.
We need to activate the already existing client/server federated scalable human aggregation content network.
* Based on RSS (98% implemented)
* Based on current CMS’s (90% implemented)
* Second tier embed option for legacy sites (80% implemented)
* Constructed with the 4 opens.
1) Content producers are all the current sites – they have to put out a RSS feed of content (98% do all ready)
2) Second level – subject/region/ideology aggregation are run by small groups and individuals. These can be based on current CMS’s with RSS aggregation modules (50% implemented)
3) Top site takes feeds from the subject aggregation. Same CMS as second sites.
Producers/subject (1,2) can take embeds for (3) etc. to help to bootstrap the network tech.
Thus the content is published at the bottom and make its way up to wide distribution on the top sites.
Important to realise that NOBODY is in control of the network and it is completely open to setting up nodes at different levels. It is governed by the 4 opens and a light bit of agreed “set-in-stone” process.
In this set-up we have a horizontal media where everyone is in charge of their publishing, and the different communities organically create their own content flow. Some sites will be highly linked and aggregated and some will be ignored, the whole network will organically split into streams and tributaries of data/content flows. These can and will become communities. If one fails it will be replaced organically with another, the best will rise and the worst will fall, they will criss-cross and settle into a multitude of flows.
The whole network will be based on duplicated synchronised meta-data – the source will reside at the publishing site. Davie Winar has done work on how this is achieved (we can implement some caching into the network to deal with scaling issues when needed).
SPAM is dealt with by trust, as each site makes a decision to trust the sites it links to, If you let spam into your network, people will drop YOU. A data roll-back can be implemented for removing SPAM flows that get though this trust network.
The friction (delay/server load) of the RSS object aggregation is actually a feature driving content consumption to close to the bottom. Each server can have traffic light flags for load, add too many feeds and it goes into the red, drop feeds and it goes orange to healthy green. This accelerates the diversity of aggregation sites – if you don’t wont to be an aggregate you just take embeds from a site you trust.
The top sites are easy to create but slower/hard to add value to, this drives the creation of second(2) sites to build out the wider network.
The successful top sites will grow to compete with the failing traditional media. The health of the network will be at the second level sites that feed the top sites. The content will come from the bottom, rejuvenating blogging and community websites. The closed dotcom’s such as Facebook and Twitter lock them selves out of content production by not supporting RSS – they become declining dumb pipes for OMN distribution.
JavaScript embeds can quickly add the content to a wide range of existing open internet sites to accelerate take-up (we already have this working with a video embed on every page of the New Internationalist website for visionOntv)
As the OMN takes off we can create peer to peer encrypted object flows to move this away from the client server paradigm to make the network more robust against disruption by states and corporations.
The outcome is a distributed data internet of flows. Like the internet itself, it will simply flow round damage/censorship and is open to all.
Hope you found this useful
Hamish Campbell
Published Date 1/24/15 7:42 AM
#Climatecamp is a clear example of the transition from alternative media to social media. When the Climate Change Movement began, #Indymedia was already in decline. At the first two Climate Camps, however, there was still a healthy Indymedia centre providing internet access, sustainable power, and shared computers.
There has always been tension between alternative media and outreach to traditional media. They compete with each other and, to a large extent, ignore one another. Yet for real social change, the two need to work together. Outreach to traditional media should support the production of alternative media, while alternative media should feed its strongest output into traditional media to amplify its reach.
At Climate Camp, this relationship existed mostly in name. In practice, the two groups split early on. They were originally meant to share the same physical space, but this arrangement did not last.
Traditional media outreach focused on cultivating relationships with mainstream journalists. Alternative media, meanwhile, was weighed down by the practical work of providing real services in a field that is, by nature, somewhat dysfunctional. Like oil and water, the two separated – there was no conscious “emulsifier” to hold them together. Throughout the life of Climate Camp, they never truly recombined.
Part of this split came from prejudice within activist culture itself. So-called “radical” activists often looked down on what were seen as “soft” forms of work, such as media production. This attitude is deeply embedded in activist lifestyles and is often framed through the old “spiky versus fluffy” debate.
The history to this is worth remembering – for a time, activist media and traditional media outreach followed parallel paths, each playing a role. Then blogging emerged, followed – more decisively – by #dotcons social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. A new class of #NGO-focused careerists championed these tools, which at first appeared to be remarkably effective.
Traditional media outreach initially ignored social media, reflecting the skepticism of mainstream media at the time. Naive alternative media embraced social media as a route to real social change. More realistic alternative media adopted it cautiously, seeing it mainly as another outreach channel, one that bypassed traditional gatekeepers.
The rise of social media proved catastrophic for grassroots alternative media. #NGO careerists pushed these platforms hard, and for naive alt-media practitioners they appeared to be a cure-all: the future, and the only way to be heard. Traditional media, after first seeing social media as a threat, soon embraced it and learned how to use it effectively.
Meanwhile, the remaining radical alternative media struggled on with declining relevance. Their tools aged and fell apart, and the limitations of geek culture left them unable to compete with either traditional media or the new social media platforms.
Eventually, social media absorbed activist media entirely. Traditional media retained its role by adapting late but successfully to social platforms.
As I argued in another article, geek culture seriously damaged radical alternative media. At the same time, the failure of traditional media outreach to complement activist media pushed radical voices to the margins. The growth of individual blogging briefly amplified personal voices, but ultimately weakened collective cultural power. The final blow was the wholesale embrace of social media, driven by NGO careerists.
Through these failures, we have come full circle, back to a media landscape dominated by hegemonic gatekeepers. If we are to rebuild an open media ecosystem, we must learn from these mistakes and ensure we do not repeat them.
Lessons to Learn
Conclusion
The hardest parts of building successful radical grassroots media are social, cultural, and political. For this reason, such projects must not be led by technology. In fact, technology is the easiest part of radical media work.
The tools and standards we need already exist. What is missing is the collective will – and the common sense – to use what we already have.
A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
Published Date 12/23/14 7:52 PM
Let’s look at how we acturly organise. Grassroots alternative streams (and #mainstreaming river with more complexity) can be split into a number of streams
* The horizontals
* The verticals
In the horizontals the organising is actually pretty opaque – lets look at the tributary’s
Organic consensus – This is rare and generally fleeting, a working example is the rainbow gathering, generally as the project settles into place organic consensus is replaced with one of the bellow organising strategies. The organic nature comes from shared myths and traditions.
Bureaucratic consensus – Common, but this tends to be only a surface layer obscuring the actual working practices which would be one of the others. It leads to ossification, see late climate camp process as an example of this. A current project is looking likely the “edge fund”.
Opaque affinity group – There is a group of people who are doing it, but you don’t know how or how to take on a role. A lot of alternatives are actually run like this, middle/late #climatecamp is an example.
Invisible affinity group – The thing just appears as if by magic, lovely as far as it takes you. Given time, this will burn out and morph into one of the other forms. Early #climatecamp is a good example of this, as is early #Indymedia
Open affinity group – The is hope in this hard to sustain one, an example would be the tech group at Balcomby anti fracking camp. These are hard/tiring to keep open “naturally” falling into a different strategy.
Then the verticals are more in the open
Democratic centralism (#SWP etc) top down and corrupt, good for the nasty crew at the centre that can last a long time by draining new blood from the alternative. Big noise and little effect.
Bureaucratic democracy (#NUJ) good as far as it goes but endless meetings and heavy use of cross subsidy to sustain the sluggish process, problematically reactionary dues to glacial adaptation to changes around it.
Career Hierarchy – most trade unions and the Labour Party, conservative and sluggish, can be captured by functioning opaque/invisible affinity groups and then used for their own ends – an example the #newlabour project.
Generally, the way things are on the river surface bears little relation to the undercurrents below the surface. Almost all organising that achieves social change is by opaque or invisible affinity groups. The more permanent, static alt infrastructure is Democratic centralism or Bureaucratic democracy. The parts that merge into the mainstream river are career Hierarchy.
We live in turbulent times, enjoy your ride on the choppy river.
Published Date 12/11/14 5:53 PM
I went to a workshop at Space Studios on digital money and the arts. What follows are my notes – not a summary of the event so much as the threads it pulled for me, and the questions it raised.
Forms of money
There are multiple forms of money in circulation, each serving different social logics:
Key problem: endless reinvention
The core point I wanted to get across is simple but routinely ignored: Don’t – repeat – use existing projects. Instead, everyone reinvents the wheel. We end up with hundreds of implementations of the same limited, fashionable ideas, none of them federated, none of them interoperable. Value is lost in the mess. Then the cycle repeats: rinse, repeat, move on. It’s both sad and destructive.
Space, power, and arrogance
There’s also the issue of arrogance: who is pushing whom out? Space itself has value, and control of space is control of meaning. Capital markets must expand or die. As a result, the things we value are constantly being consumed. This is colonisation of alternatives. Gentrification isn’t just about housing, its tentacles reach into every cultural and social space.
Money and social change
The world used to be regulated, in very different ways. After the fall of the Soviet Union, ripped-up money lay like confetti in public parks. Old systems collapsed overnight, replaced by temporary currencies. This transition shows something crucial: to change society, you have to change the money.
Art, value, and gatekeeping
Artists talk about reshaping the world, but what does that actually mean? What is art, and what is tart? The “chattering classes” – are they parasites, or do they have value? Are they vampires, or are they simply articulators of exclusivity? Who is curating the conversation, and to what end? What outcomes are actually produced?
And the deeper question underneath all this: where does value come from?
Community vs capital
Take the Rainbow Gathering as an example:
* Gift-based
* Global
* Nomadic
* Decentralised
* Reproduced again and again, everywhere, without ownership or branding
This raises a fundamental divide:
* Are you focused on community or on capital?
* Are you making for yourself, or for others?
* Is the work abstract, or is it useful?
* Does it live inside the art world, or outside it – in the space of use?
Many people are alienated from the establishment by gatekeepers who control access, legitimacy, and funding.
Attention, federation, and resistance
Attention is a currency. If we decentralise it, hierarchies will begin to crumble – not completely, but meaningfully. Bravely independent projects matter, but federation is the real solution.
And we must actively resist the colonisation of alternatives. Capital markets will always try to absorb what threatens them. Gentrification is ripe, aggressive, and ongoing, unless we build systems that are harder to capture.
Published Date 11/21/14 4:44 PM
An example of what works.
At #Balcome the anti-fracking camp last summer, we built a “visible affinity group” to do the power and tech for the camp. This was successful in providing working off grid energy for the camp of more than 200 people for 2 months.
However, it wasn’t without problems and did fail to build on this success when the time came to reproduce this open working model at the next camps over the winter.
How we made it work, a timeline:
* Clear the space of the dysfunction by imposing open working practice’s.
* This opens the space for functional working which has been excluded by the dysfunctional pushy minority.
* Open working practices nurtures talent and energy, the space growers and blossoms, good shit happens.
* A tiny minority of seriously dysfunctional individuals will actively try and destroy this flowering, some emotional violence will inshuew in the process of excluding them.
* The wider camp will become used to a working tech space and normality will settle back into place, at its best this is rinsed and repeated for each part of the camp.
* People will start to forget the open processes as artificial, constant vigilances is needed here to keep openness relevant and in place.
* As the camp is packed down, a open meeting will bring this amnesia to the surface as everyone has an equal voice and the focus (affinity) that created the flowering will be trampled under the widening of the group’s members.
In the horizontal alt there are only two successful working practices, most organising happens by “invisible affinity groups” #climatecamp and #RTS are examples of this. Rarely “open affinity groups” are also successful, examples would be early #Indymedia and this tech at Balcome.
Published Date 11/21/14 3:20 PM
Its important to understand the perspective/world view am coming from to understand what am saying about the state of the alternative. Anarchist/socialist/libertarian/liberal leaning on the start and tapering off the end… am reacting against Hierarchical/conservative/authoritarian. This is a classic enlightenment divide so we should all be well aware of living it – even though few actively think about this lived experience. The views in this series of posts need to be read with this in mind.
The options for an alternative to our current world view/experience/mindset is narrow and limited, largely it is a collection of failed traditions, unexamined and repeated by each amnesiac generation. The normal world, I will call it the “traditional” world for that is what it actually is is so dominant and global that any alternative is but shadows, the “occupy moment” is a obvious example. How did we come to this?
A very broad outline is needed before we go on, the 19th century was Capitalism, the 20th Liberalism, and the 21st century is Anarchy. Each ideology is a short form for the strongest thread running thought the dynamic parts of the global economy/culture. That is 19th was industrial production, then social democracy/welfareism and now digital libertarianism’s of the internet.
In the 1980’s Thatcher and Reagan were the avant-gardist of demolishing idealogical alternatives, they were part of a movement that spread all around the world entrenching a right-wing ideology “the is no alternative” and “the end of history” this has been ingested and become part of all our structures/buroceseys/instations and a core part of everyone who grew up over this time and the generation after. This right project pushed the end of the 21st century back into the beginning of the 19th century at the same time that the “digitisation project” was sweeping in the 21st century of Anerkey. We now live in a hybrid time of 19th century ideology, crumbling 20th century social institutions and the future of the economy running on shackey 21st century arackic just in time/horizontal working of the dotcoms.
Thus at the start of the 21st century much is broken and little working today has “value”. Together with the last 2 century’s environmental legacy of climate change puts us as humanity in a shaky position. The ingested legacy of Ragen and Thatcher puts us as individuals in a shaky state to shape a path for humane survival.
A quick side note, this actually is not an environmental issue at all as in the planetary environment will look after it self as it has for millennium, speshers extinction on a large scale is the norm not an exception in planetary terms. The problem we face is a human one, saving the environment is a side issue, in a few thousand years with out us the environment will stabilise and diversify agen to replace the catastrophe that we are building with our destructive muddled thinking. The issue is can we save the things we value, the shifting environment being the thing we build this value wiithin.
Ok am going to leave this here half finished… and carry on in a scatty but overarching repetitive way in further posts 🙂
To look at what works in the alt and what doen’t work – and the are some bit that do work to cheer you up 🙂
