Hamish Campbell an #openweb organic intellectual and technologist
This is a mess we are finally starting to move away from. For over a decade, #failbook was one of the main organising spaces for progressive activism. On the surface it looked useful: easy groups, fast sharing, broad reach. But structurally it was never neutral. It was built as a #dotcons attention machine, optimised for … Continue reading OMN history note: Failbook, activism, and the enclosure of organising
The #KISS secret about the noise in “digital sovereignty” is very simple – Ignore most of this branding and build commons tech instead. That’s the path, not another layer of management, another funding bureaucracy for a glossy strategy document. Not another NGO conference circuit explaining why nothing can happen without another round of funding. Just … Continue reading Compost “digital sovereignty”, build working commons
Let’s look back to before the #Fediverse reboot, to be honest about the last two decades of #openweb failure, for a long time we got pulled off the path – not only by enemies, but by a mix of fear, fashion, and half-understood technical “solutions” that felt right to fearful people at the time. The … Continue reading The #encryptionist detour
#techchurn is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies – not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress. It burns community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy, while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures untouched.https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of … Continue reading #OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)
For progressive and radical people, the central political questions of our time is simple to ask but hard to answer – Why is it so difficult to rebuild the institutions that were destroyed in our #deathcult worship of the 1980s and 1990s? And more importantly why does the impossibility of rebuilding them make it so … Continue reading Broken institutions, and the need to rebuild the commons
Fascism, treats collaboration as weakness. Something you only (pretend to) do when you’re not strong enough to dominate outright. In the fascist worldview, cooperation isn’t power, it’s a temporary tactic until hierarchy and force can be re-asserted. That’s why fascists can never be trusted. Not tactically, not strategically, not “just this once.” They don’t believe … Continue reading Fascism, treats collaboration as weakness.
There are meany online exchanges about software licences that can help to highlight the #geekproblem. Yep, these conversations can sound radical at first glance: “Software licences won’t destroy capitalism, but if they can be even slightly annoying to capitalists in the meantime, I’ll take it.” Fair. Nobody sensible thinks a licence clause will end capitalism. … Continue reading Software licences and the #geekproblem
Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions – the geeks, developers, architects, … Continue reading We fucked up… and that matters because we still have agency
Fighting #fashionistas with fashion. We have an app outline for that: iPhone or android. Not as a lifestyle tweak, not as wellness branding, not as another individual “better habits” story. These proposed apps and the wider projects have nothing to do with self-optimisation, productivity hacks, or personal purity. Framing it that way is already defeat … Continue reading Digital Detox Is Urgently Needed
Trump and Putin are the figureheads of the #deathcult and 3ed rate people like Staner are puppets. The #nastyfew, mostly invisible in the smoke and mirrors of #mainstreaming media, are the ones who push the “we”. And they also invest in a part of our “progressive” paths, always much less affective than they need to … Continue reading “We, we, we,” they say – but who chooses the “we”?
We are having a tech reboot for the last few years, federated seems to be where it’s at right now, and it makes sense, the #fediverse is flourishing where so many “#web3” or pure #p2p projects stumbled. This isn’t to say #p2p is bad. But for a peer-to-peer social network to actually work and be … Continue reading The Fediverse is native to the open web
We have been stripped morally naked by the last 40 years of the #deathcult. Every assumption that we lived in a tolerant, “good” world is slipping away. The growing #classwar was historically balanced to stop the possibility of a socialist takeover, as blinded liberals see this, two accidents: a temporary ecosystemic surplus and a temporary … Continue reading Composting the #techshit, planting the future