An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
The online world is full of noise, outrage, and clickbait designed to keep us reacting rather than acting. But the path to any real change doesn’t come from blindly doom-scrolling and fighting every battle thrown at us by the right-wing algorithms. It simply comes from building #DIY. A useful first step, if you want a … Continue reading Be FOR Something, Not Against Everything
In a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy, President Donald Trump has reoriented America’s geopolitical path, distancing from Ukraine and seeking rapprochement with Russia. This realignment reflects a broader strategic thinking aimed at countering China’s rising influence on the global stage. Reassessing Ukraine’s strategic value, historically, the United States has supported Ukraine as a bulwark … Continue reading There is a method to Trump’s messy geopolitical madness
The #socialweb is shifting away from corporate-controlled paths like #Twitter and #Facebook toward decentralized, more #DIY alternatives. The idea is simple: instead of a single company having control, decentralized protocols allow different platforms to connect while giving people the power to shape and control their digital paths. Three major decentralized protocols have emerged: While all … Continue reading Comparing Decentralized #openweb Protocols
Food for thought for people trying to change the world. For the last ten years, activism has been trapped in a paradox: we speak of grassroots change, yet we reach for #dotcons and #geekproblem tools that are built for vertical control. The digital infrastructure we rely on is dominated by top-down structures, reinforcing the power … Continue reading The tools we use shape the activism we grow
On the #dotcons mess driving the political move to the hard right, the chattering classes, eager to ride the wave of #mainstreaming, are finally pushing real rather than fake radical critique. These are mostly the same people who built their careers within the #dotcons and #neoliberal highways, are now embracing narratives that grassroots movements have … Continue reading Way late, but better than never
The tension between control vs. trust in tech and society is a core to defining the success or failure of grassroots, open projects like #OMN and the #fediverse. The problem isn’t just technical, but deeply social: a struggle between hierarchical control (power over) and distributed, democratic trust (power within). But we have the ongoing #geekproblem … Continue reading Are the currently spaces trust is built at scale, or do we need to create them from scratch?
We live in a disastrous system that worships consumption. It’s not just about meeting needs, it’s about feeding an economy that only grows when people buy more, waste more, and replace instead of repair what they need. This is one of the core tenants of the #deathcult, the #neoliberal ideology that tells us there is … Continue reading A #4opens alternative to the #deathcult
The #climatecrisis isn’t just about rising temperatures and vanishing ecosystems, it’s also about the structures we build, the technology we use, and the ways we connect. The fight for a sustainable future isn’t limited to forests and oceans; it extends into the digital world as well. In this website, a recurring theme is composting the … Continue reading Rewilding the Digital & Physical World: How My Work Ties to the Environment
In the early days, the internet was a wild, open landscape, a place of creativity, collaboration, and decentralization. But over time, the rise of corporate platforms (the #dotcons) turned it into something far more controlled, walled-off, and extractive. What if we could reclaim that original vision? What if we could build an open, federated, and … Continue reading Rewilding a people-first web, beyond the #dotcons
The video is bad quality VHS, but worth your time to see a progressive #openweb native capitalism, and to find grounding for post-capitalist with the #OMN project. Mark S. Miller’s presentation on the Xanadu Hypertext System at George Mason University (GMU) in the early ’90s is good to reference when discussing the #OMN (Open Media … Continue reading The Open Society and its Media (Mark S. Miller at GMU, 1991?)
Funding structures are built for #NGO nonsense, not grassroots projects where actual value is created. The #OMN, #indymediaback, and #OGB challenge this, but funders can’t grasp it because they don’t understand value outside institutional framing. Fixing the funding #blocking, funders need to THINK, not just UNDERSTAND. Right now, they “understand” in the framework of existing … Continue reading We need to break out of this cycle
The reality of trying to build real alternatives, without deep-rooted community support, even the best projects wither. The liberal/progressive crowd shouts into the void, but when it comes to actual action, they tend to retreat into safe, performative bubbles rather than engaging with real, messy change. The Mastodon codebase is an example here, it was … Continue reading Maybe it’s time to stop trying to fix broken tools, to build with a truly native approach?