An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
There are a lot of mental health issues that are pushed over us in what remains of our open alt spaces, we need ways to mediate the damage, to help the people who spread this mess. The path of the #mainstreaming is corrosive to the alt cultures it feeds on. The cycle is always the … Continue reading The challenge for #OMN & #openweb
The #openweb is a much better framing than #fediverse when trying to break out of the tribal bubbles. It speaks to something broader and historical, whereas #fediverse is just one (flawed) expression of those ideas. Why #openweb matters, it’s not new, which is actually a strength, this is the original internet vision before it got … Continue reading Cutting through 99% of the #techshit
Power in tech isn’t neutral, and our issue over the last 20 years is that we have allowed the #dotcons to hoarded and weaponised it. The answer to our failer isn’t to retreat or seek more “ethical” enclosures, it’s to reclaim our power through radical, commons-based networks like #indymediaback and the #OMN. This argument is … Continue reading The difference between struggle and #fashernista ethics. The latter is comfortable. The former matters.
The La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, one of the bloodiest and most revolutionary anthems ever written. It’s a war song, a call to arms from the French Revolution, dripping with the spirit of resistance and rage against tyranny. Unlike the polite, polished nationalism of modern times, this one doesn’t hold back. It’s about rising … Continue reading Songs that matter, in our times
Many years ago, I wrote on my website sidebar: “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.” Decades later, we still to often find ourselves standing on opposite shores of this river, struggling to bridge the understanding … Continue reading Bridging the gap: Building a human-first #openweb
As the #fashernista and #geekproblem “debate” over social media platforms intensifies, the choice between public, decentralised networks and corporate-controlled #dotcons has never been clearer. Let’s look at a simple example: The choice between #Mastodon and #Bluesky reflects a broader conflict between decentralisation and #dotcons corporate control. It should, but often is not easy to see … Continue reading Public Social Media: The Choice is Clear
The web wasn’t built by solo tech geniuses, finance firms, or flashy luminaries making illusionary promises. It was grown by the collective time, energy, and creativity of millions of grassroots people and communities working together to create something greater than themselves. The internet as we know it emerged not from the top-down visions of elites, … Continue reading The web wasn’t built by solo tech geniuses
The billionaire problem, Elon Musk, tech oligarchs, and the #deathcult of wealth as a social path. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is emblematic of a larger issue: the unchecked power of tech oligarchs. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill millionaires; they’re part of a nasty few, the class that operates above the ultra-wealthy, shaping politics, economies, and … Continue reading Tech princes and the #deathcult
This is a #fluffy response to this thread, about people feeling that some of the discourse surrounding the #openweb is too black and white, and that this is going to increase with the current pushing to the right political reality. Yes, supporting the #openweb doesn’t automatically make you “left-wing” or a “Marxist,” just as using … Continue reading The open web and the messy middle ground
What’s striking in today’s mess is how desperately we need spaces for people to come together and organise against the concentrated accumulations of power that are running rampant. Billionaires and massive corporations hold most of the power, shaping society to serve their narrow interests, while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves … Continue reading The Urgent Need for Collective Action
The #fashernista common sense path—driven by trends, appearances, and surface-level thinking—is always a reflection of the dominant ideology. In today’s world, this means it perpetuates the neo-liberal #deathcult, which pushes profit over people and the environment. This ideology a motivation of #stupidindividualism, where the focus is on personal gain, consumerism, and competition rather than solidarity, … Continue reading #OMN demonstrates the values that dead ideologies refuse to acknowledge
Sifting the wheat from the chaff in our technological and social mess is an important challenge. This is why the #OMN approach of leveraging work across communities and utilising multi-tag aggregation is an elegant and powerful solution. It would be useful to look at this from a more #mainstreaming prospective. Aggregated work across communities of … Continue reading The wider #OMN project from a more #mainstreaming prospective