Where is our media

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

  • Overcome the limits of geek culture in activist media. Openness – social as much as technical – is the way forward.
  • Recognise the politics of media. We need a deliberate “emulsifier” between radical grassroots media and traditional media outreach. Social movements must rein in and refocus mainstream media messaging. Media production is not “soft”; it is spiky, strategic, and central to activism.
  • Accept the incompatibility with NGO careerism. Radical grassroots media cannot coexist out of balance with NGO careerist agendas. Strong foundations are needed, so media infrastructure cannot be captured or subverted by privileged actors, this is ultimately in everyone’s interest.

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.

Organiseing the 21st Century

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.

Art money and society some notes

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:

  • LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems): These tend to work for liberals and localists. The Brixton Pound, discussed at the meeting, is a current example.
  • Digital money: This works first for geeks, then for capital. Bitcoin and its endless clones follow this familiar trajectory.
  • Gift economies: These work for communities. Examples include London boaters and the Rainbow Gathering -both long-running, functional systems built on trust and reciprocity.
  • £££ (state money): This works for the state, and therefore for capital. This is the dominant system we currently live under.
  • Flatter: A potential path toward a practical digital utopia. (Needs more concrete examples, but the intent is important.)

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.

Where are we? An example of what works

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.

Were are we

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 🙂

My Media

Published Date 11/17/14 3:29 PM

I live in a functioning contemporary P2P media world. For a few weeks I have tried going back to the traditional media. Its an eye opener to (re)realise how narrow and right wing the progressive traditional media is. I live in a world of RSS aggregation for my “newspaper”, podcasts for my “radio” and torrents for my “TV” and “Cinema”. With a unhealthy dose of #failbook for organising the social world.

Its winter time so am spending more time in cafés working and charging laptops, in this space am picking up traditional paper news. On the boat I had some internet downtime so plugged back into radio 4 and every so often look for interesting Tv on iplayer etc. What I find when going to traditional media is a narrowing of my world view, its a dumbed down world on paper/radio and TV. Its actually worst than this as its a strongly propagandist in it choice of voices. I find that the “liberal” traditional media is a slow steady drip feed of poison that dulls the wide possibility’s of social and environmental change that is transparently needed and possible.

I advocate wholesale that people leave this world view for their mental health and the health of the wider human/natural world, the liberal traditional media is making you ill (at ease).

But I hear cries “were is this mythical alternative” and in a limited sense you would be right to ask this. BUT it would be a circular discussion, the alternative has existed for the last 20 years – the issue is chicken and egg you have to use it for it to exist.

Most of the real existing alternative is based on a “stupidly simple” technology created by the practical tech visionary Dave Winer. The format is RSS its the based of my news reading (feedly) and my radio (beyondpod) I have been working (and failing) to make it the bases of my TV and cinema for the last 10 years (visionOntv).

You too can shift to/build your own contemporary per2per media world and reclaim your mental health and power to shape your life and the community/world you live in. The traditional media is a slow steady poison, its well past the time to brake free, its not as hard as you think.

Importing goods from China

Published Date 11/1/14 6:27 PM

 

Am thinking about seting up an import and installation business for small wind turbines from China to put onto boats and power protest camps. At the moment the majority of small scale power generation is from fossil fuels, this is both unpleasant and needless. Solar power in the summer being very viable, this leaves 3-4 month of the year with limited power – thus diversifying into solar/wind set-ups.

To buy small wind turbines in the UK the expense is to high so am trying importing them directly from China – the minimum order when shipping is taken into account is 3 so have sent over $1K to a pretty random paypal account to buy them.

For some background on how to go about importing http://importcrashcourse.com/pay-importing-china/

To get an idea if a company is relabel its good to do as much searching as possible – from the pretty random paypal gmail account they sent me I found out this information https://whoisology.com/archive_6/chinaalps.com that they actually own 4 company’s and are the registry email of the Domain of the company I am buying the goods from. This is a good start.

Then the is the issue of VAT/duty to be paid http://www.dutycalculator.com/

Update: the goods arrived and seem to be of good quality, the issue of installing a tower is the subject of my next post.

Stupid individualism and the possibility of an alternative

Published Date 10/27/14 12:52 AM

Stupid individualism and the visionOntv templates.

Our templates for video journalism are designed to radically simplify and empower normal people to make coherent video news pieces using the tools they largely already have. They are successful at this if people fallow the template’s – it says this at the end of most of them.

The issue that creates failure is a standard one for the possibility of an alternative, I call it this “stupid individualism”.

The disparity of wealth on the surface and poverty of the underlying human condition (some would call this “spirit”) is striking to many thinking and feeling people. Our shared western society is based on a hegemonic false senses of individualism, were the reality is largely faceless conformity thinly covered by lifestyle fashion. This is the bases of consumer capitalism our “wealth” is built on. The world view atomises any possibility of building an alternative and shows up in as a block in most attempts to build one.

Our templates boil down more than 30 years of experience of awarded wining fast turn around video journalism to a A4 cartoon sheet. The instructions are clear and complete, if you fallow these, after a few attempts you will likely have mastered the bases of audio visual story telling and from this point of mastery opens a whole world of creativity and real genuine individualism.

Very few actually get this far and we know this because we have trained thousands of citizen journalist over hundreds of workshops at both undercurrents and visionOntv. Why? I would put fowered my old friend/foe “stupid individualism” as the prime explanation (though would admit the are technical challenges as well).

The impotence of the template is more in what it doesn’t say, the is much more information in the omissions, this is how it fits on a A4 with pictures. It distils what does work and explains this.

People do not fallow the template, often they do not even pick it up and read it, they then go onto do what THEY think is video making, they do all the bits that the template purposely omits and very few of the bits in it, the result is almost always a dis empowering mess. This is the same thing with all groups we work with.

We live in an individualist society, were we are all “empowered individuals”. The problem is evident in that this is our empowerment is an illusion, we are all dis empowered individuals with egos let lose on dispoling mode. We think we are empowered because everything around us that works is on bureaucratic auto pilot, we don’t actually have to create anything original and lack the base skills to so when the rare option comes round. Our templates are such a rear opportunity, if you can take your mind out of dispoleing mode and fallow the instructions – the first step and a rare hopeful sign for us as trainers is a budding CJ actually checking the steps on the paper template as they go though the filming.

This “stupid individualism” is a block on many parts of building an alternative.

Some background

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

The poverty of the alternative

Published Date 10/17/14 1:24 PM

Was looking at this site/project http://occupydemocracy.org.uk here is a reaction:

The tools we use for activism are dominated by top-down vertical thinking – the horizontal tools are left at the bottom of the tool box when we reach for a digital front for our grassroots campaigning. Our organising mirrors this right-wing reality – most activism is organised by invisible/opaque affinity groups. The words (wind) are often hippy peace and love or dusty revolution – the reality is far blunter, just open your eyes and look, the isn’t much of an alternative. This obvious realization is surprising, as we actually have the most open and radical time to move in/ to create real alternatives. The tool box for horizontalism is overflowing with tools, the organizing process are a bit more complex.

How to solar power your Tablet

Published Date 9/30/14 8:47 PM

You need a panel with at least 14W to charge a tablet, the are a lot of them out there, but, they get VERY mixed reviews. I have only used larger or smaller panels so can’t vouch for any of these so please do some research before buying.

Here are a sample that fit the speck – click on the image for the ebay link for each

The is no guaranty that a naked USB power lead out of a solar panel will charge your device, to increase the chance of this working you need to buy a USB battery with pass-through. This is just an example, check the speck carefully very few USB battery’s do pass-through charging

This setup would work fine for a large smart phone or any USB powered device. Feel free to ask questions in the comments and feedback real life experience here please.