An #openweb organic intellectual,technologist and part of the #OMN
Activism is messy. When we push against #mainstreaming, bad faith actors will come at us hard. Our best, often only, defence is sticking to good faith, telling our own stories, and holding onto process. Without this, the dominant narrative (which serves power) will drown out our voices. The Problem is well-meaning people who wreck everything, … Continue reading Mediating bad faith missteps in grassroots movements
The last 40 years of #mainstreaming has been nothing but a slow, suffocating descent into #climatechaos, driven by a #deathcult logic that normalised destruction as “common sense.” The worst part? A lot of our critical thinking is still shaped by the corresponding #postmodernism, which has left us floundering in relativism, unable to take action beyond … Continue reading We can’t keep simply repeating this mess
The La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, one of the bloodiest and most revolutionary anthems ever written. It’s a war song, a call to arms from the French Revolution, dripping with the spirit of resistance and rage against tyranny. Unlike the polite, polished nationalism of modern times, this one doesn’t hold back. It’s about rising … Continue reading Songs that matter, in our times
The web wasn’t built by solo tech geniuses, finance firms, or flashy luminaries making illusionary promises. It was grown by the collective time, energy, and creativity of millions of grassroots people and communities working together to create something greater than themselves. The internet as we know it emerged not from the top-down visions of elites, … Continue reading The web wasn’t built by solo tech geniuses
Can you smell it? Can you feel the unease in the world the hard shift to the right is feeding off? The dead ideology of Neo-liberalism is everywhere. It’s a rotten corpse in everything we look at, everything we touch. And yes while it might feel uncomfortable, we should actively feel distaste when we look … Continue reading A world we see as normal
The #OpenMediaNetwork (#OMN) offers a clear, practical path to building the #openweb, grounded in #4opens. It does this by leveraging open protocols like #ActivityPub (#AP) and #RSS, alongside #FOSS software, to create a distributed network of media platforms where people and groups can join, participate, and contribute. This, like the #Fediverse, is a direct challenge … Continue reading The #OMN path is about building the activist #openweb infrastructure
Let’s try a spiky reply to this tweet on the #mainstreaming #dotcons platform, keep in mind these spaces often reek of superficial analysis and throwing around half-baked ideas without engaging with the deeper structural issues. On the subject: “the culture of spontaneity, and mass horizontalism.” Yes, these approaches have their flaws, particularly when they lack … Continue reading Prodding a #dotcons flow
The #fashernista common sense path, driven by trends, appearances, and surface-level thinking, is always a reflection of the dominant ideology. In today’s world, this means it perpetuates the neo-liberal #deathcult, which pushes profit over people and the environment. This ideology a motivation of #stupidindividualism, where the focus is on personal gain, consumerism, and competition rather … Continue reading #OMN demonstrates the values that dead ideologies refuse to acknowledge
A look at the paths we need to take to balance the current #mainstreaming. Mess begets more mess, embrace It, but strategically is the starting point of the #OGB project, recognising that solving crises will inevitably create new complications. This isn’t defeatist but pragmatic. Understanding that “messy consensus” is a natural state of grassroots activism … Continue reading A social tech path out of the current mess
Technology has a role, the #OMN, but as much of the power we need is social. The essence of the challenges we face in activism, can be expressed by the tension between the “fluffy” and “spiky” paths, which shape the progress and direction of movements. It’s vital to resist the dogmatic tendencies that stifle this … Continue reading Activating the Open Media Network
The #fediverse is a glimpse of a radically kind of society through decentralized and community-driven models of governance and organization. This path can be used to challenge traditional hierarchies and power structures, making it possible to resist the imposing liberal “common sense” solutions which align with existing control. On this very different path we need … Continue reading Branding keeps coming up as an issue
The tension between different approaches to activism highlights the need for creative synthesis in addressing the broader social and ecological crises we face. Suggestions for Moving Forward: Focus on finding shared values between different activist approaches to grow solidarity while respecting diversity of tactics. Encourage scalable experimentation with alternative economic and social models, with federation … Continue reading What can we learn, what can we do?