An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
To understand where the #Fediverse and the #OpenSocialWeb are heading, and how not to lose our way, we need to reflect on where we’ve come from. The history of grassroots #openweb activism offers both inspiration and hard lessons. Foundations are built by real people, social movements start local, they begin with people on the margins … Continue reading Rise and Fall of Grassroots #OpenWeb
What can we learn from the current mess. The protests didn’t fail because people didn’t care. They failed because the system is not built to respond to protest, it’s built to absorb it. We’ve marched for climate justice, taken the streets for peace, rallied for gender freedom, and now we mobilize for Palestine. The awareness … Continue reading Affective Protest vs. Effective Power: From Spectacle to Strategy
If you want to live a more interesting alt life, the first most important step is to stop prioritizing “making money,” you need to step away from the money economy. This isn’t abstract theory, it’s a practical need to shift how we live, relate, and create. The best way to do this? Support and build … Continue reading Get Out of the Money Economy – Rediscover the Gift Economy
Over the last few years, we’ve been watching a familiar story unfold, we’ve seen repeat itself in radical spaces, tech movements, and grassroots networks for decades. It starts in the grassroots with “progressive” #fashernistas (yes, them) pushing themselves into the front to speak for “us.” They talk the talk of decentralisation, care, community, and #FOSS … Continue reading This is a story of power, plain and simple
The discussions on sovereignty at #NGIForum2025 make me wonder: what year are we in? It’s as if we’re rebooting grassroots conversations we’ve had for decades – but without the mess, memory, or movement that gave them meaning in the first place. A breath of clarity came from @renchap, who said it plainly: Absolutely. If that … Continue reading Getting through this era of collapse with anything humane intact
It’s good to see events like #NGIFORUM2025 as it’s trying to be on the path of the #Fediverse and the wider #openweb reboot which are real forces for social good, messy, hopeful, and grounded in decades of grassroots digital culture, which we do need to support. BUT we also need to speak honestly, as these … Continue reading NGIFORUM2025 is timidly touching sense
A story by Hamish Campbell Genre: Climate fiction Setting: Oxford, England – 2030s to 2080s Themes: Climate migration, class war, migrant displacement, urban decay and adaptation, history repeating, social justice, collapse vs. transformation, DIY survival vs. institutional decay. A post #climatechaos utopia/dystopia history of a small English town. Timeline: THE RISING PART TWO: THE CRACKING … Continue reading Oxford: Going with The Flow
It’s becoming a problem. When people start asking, “Is @_elena the first genuine superstar of the Fediverse?” – we should all pause. This isn’t idle praise, it’s the reproduction of celebrity culture, liberal imperialism, and vertical hierarchy in a space that explicitly set out to reject those structures. Have you ever thought – just for … Continue reading It’s becoming a problem
We’re living through a cultural shift. The #Fediverse, the #openweb, and grassroots tech projects like #OMN were born to challenge the values of the corporate web, not to reproduce them.But what are we doing instead? We’re seeing people attacked simply for linking to context and history. Linking is native to the open web. Attacking people … Continue reading When we block thinking, it’s pratish #dotcons behaviour
With the #Fediverse gaining increasing #mainstreaming attention, we’re entering a familiar cycle, an influx of well-funded #NGO-branded projects trying to “fix” the #openweb by reshaping it in their own narrowing and to often blinded paths. Take this year’s #chatteringclass event, #FediForum. Alongside breathless praise, last year, for #Threads joining the #opensocialweb space, we’re seeing the … Continue reading The Fediverse is opening, but there is a cost
In the sprouting landscape of #openweb infrastructure, it’s not just code that gets ignored, it’s the possibility of change itself. Projects like #makeinghistory, part of the wider Open Media Network (#OMN), aren’t asking for much. They’re not flashy. They’re not political in the mainstream sense. They just quietly build the back-end tools that allow people … Continue reading The wall of funding silence
Seminar Reflection: Philosophy, AI, and Innovation – Week 6Topic: AI Deliberation at ScaleSpeakers: Chris Summerfield (Oxford & AI Safety Institute), MH Tessler (Google DeepMind)Key texts: Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (excerpt) and Summerfield et al., “AI Can Help Humans Find Common Ground in Democratic Deliberation” This seminar focus is on scaling … Continue reading Governance, the mess of AI tech-fix paths