An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
This is touching on the event as had to leave early. I was recently at a talk from the Oxford University series, “The Philosophers Talking About AI”. There were some underlying themes that are deeply relevant to how we think about privacy, information, and our current techno-social mess. Action vs. Paralysis, the talk opens with … Continue reading The Philosophers Talking About AI: Context, Flow, and the #geekproblem
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
With the current hard move to the right let’s look at the current mess more clearly, we’re watching the slow-motion implosion of geopolitical sanity, driven by a feedback loop of paranoia, expansionism, and elitist delusion all round. I will use an example, the Russian neo-monarchy we installed with the fall of the #USSR is both … Continue reading The West, Russia, and the madness of mutual sabotage
🎧 Listen on CBC The #mainstreaming narrative around power tends to centre on institutions – on policy boards, corporate elitists, and those privileged enough to claw their way up the slippery sides of crumbling hierarchies. But that’s not where most of us live, and more importantly, it’s not where real change and challenge takes root. … Continue reading Review: Who Broke the Internet? – Podcast with Cory Doctorow
There’s a nice post by Elena Rossini’s, “This is what resistance to the digital coup looks like.” she is commitment to the #Fediverse, #FOSS tools, and open publishing solutions, and her critique of #VC-funded platforms like #Substack and #Bluesky is needed. At the same time, it’s worth pausing to reflect on how we talk about … Continue reading Bridging alt and mainstreaming: A note on the shape of resistance
Yes, I read the post. And yes, the despair is real. The #openweb is being bulldozed by #GenerativeAI like a forest clear-cut by machines driven not by need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nastyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and dead-end. And yes, I too … Continue reading Ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – This is a path
A reminder: treating everything as a personal conflict is unbelievably stupid. It’s one of the most damaging habits we’ve normalized in our pushing of #stupidindividualism, and a core pillar of the #mainstreaming that keeps us in loops of division, burnout, and reaction. We’ve seen this time and again – online, offline, in activist circles, and … Continue reading Treating everything as a personal conflict is unbelievably stupid
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
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
The worst parts of people and society – fear, greed, envy, control – are self-reinforcing. They act as feedback loops in a broken sound system: shrieking, distorting, drowning out all nuance is the signal-to-noise issue we need to mediate. The problem is that some people feed on this noise. The media amplifies it. Social networks … Continue reading Let’s build from the rot something rich, wild, rooted, and real
From my decades of real-world experience – especially in activism – I’ve found that self-professed #Postmodernists and Western #Buddhists have been some of the most useless and damaging people I’ve worked with. Not an exaggeration: I could probably count the genuinely good ones on one hand. This isn’t bitterness. It’s about composting a mess that … Continue reading Our liberals talking about the death of #postmodernism
The #makinghistory project is a decentralized, open-source archiving and storytelling network designed to preserve and amplify grassroots histories. It’s founded on the idea that history isn’t written by the winners – it’s made by those who resist, build, and care. Using digitized collections like the CampbellFamily archive as a seed, the project invites communities to … Continue reading Dev test work for Makinghistory application