An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
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
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
The opening moment of the workshop on Methodological Strategies for Real-Life Theorising was unintentionally profound. A story of a seagull crieing above the glass façade of the Blavatnik School of Government – a building that stands as a temple to the #deathcult that shaped our lives for the last 40 years of #neoliberal change. In … Continue reading The Seagull Knows: Notes on a Constipated Discipline
In tech, the last 20 years have been a mess of #fashernista trends and the ongoing #geekproblem, a compost heap of broken promises and abandoned projects. It’s obvious if you lift the lid and really look. The glossy hype fades fast, the rot underneath remains. Much of what we call “innovation” ended up as #techshit … Continue reading Not to punish the individuals, but to highlight the groups to compost
We’ve got a new bunch of #mainstreaming tech devs flooding into the #Fediverse. Some from burned-out Big Tech, some from the academic funding circuits, some just looking for the next shiny project after the #AI hype wore thin. Now, this could be good. IF even a few of them started working on native, grassroots tech … Continue reading We need to shape native paths, not recreate #fashionista ones with shinier branding
The #blocking of current action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with the mess our use of language makes. And the deeper issue is how this messy language feeds back into our culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, … Continue reading Messy language feeds back into our messy culture
All the #OMN projects I’ve worked on over the years, from #OGB to #indymediaback, are not directly about social change. They are about creating the possibility of social change. A subtle, but critical difference. We don’t claim to have the answers. What we do offer are tools, networks, and processes that make it easier for … Continue reading A letter from the margins of the #openweb
The #OMN project is #DIY, it only works if we build it together. This isn’t a startup pitch. It’s not a platform that magically appears out of nowhere to fix everything. It’s not a product to consume, it’s a path you walk. The direction is participatory, not passive. You don’t get to sit back and … Continue reading The #OMN is not a product — It’s a path you walk
The #4opens is a completely obverse social restating of the #FOSS development model — but with a critical edition: The return of #openprocess, something we’ve lost over the last 10 years due to the shift from public email archives to our reliance on encrypted chat. With this in mind, what is still #blocking the #openweb … Continue reading Can people engage with the #4opens process?
Our history of involvement in #EU digital outreach and policy meetings has made one thing starkly clear, our #openweb is deeply entangled in the process of #mainstreaming, a messy, often co-optive dynamic where grassroots voices are softened, diluted, and redirected into bureaucracy, then in the end they are simply #blocked. Yes, while there is value … Continue reading Mainstreaming: Building Grassroots Balance
State violence is the final refuge of the incompetent, considering the staggering incompetence of the present governments, it’s no surprise they’re hedging their failures with increased military spending. When leaders are intellectually and morally bankrupt, when they run out of ideas, when their authority falters under the weight of economic inequality, climate breakdown, and crumbling … Continue reading The current #powerpolitics
It should be painfully obvious by now that all the current #mainstreaming paths have failed. Whether we look at politics, technology, media, or activism, the same patterns emerge, co-option, stagnation, and eventual collapse under their own mess and self-destructive contradictions. The valid question isn’t whether mainstreaming has failed, it has. The real question is – … Continue reading The Failure of #Mainstreaming – What Comes Next?