The influence of postmodern thinking among #fashernistas—people more focused on appearances and trends than substance—has eroded the core purpose of activism: fostering positive social change rooted in love, solidarity, and mutual aid. Meanwhile, the rise of a new breed of right-wing “activists” using hate and fear to advance the agenda of neo-liberalism’s #deathcult highlights the stark difference between activism and fascism. It’s critical to reclaim language and purpose in this context to clarify and reinvigorate progressive movements.
Confusion, postmodernism’s emphasis on skepticism and deconstruction has undermined the unifying narratives that once drove collective action. While useful for critiquing power, it results in fragmented movements without clear goals. This confusion allows #fashernistas to dominate activism, prioritizing visibility and personal branding over systemic change.
Hate-based “activism”, where the right-wing movements use hate and fear to build “solidarity” based on this fear, by reinforce the “stupid” part of individualism, feeding off the #deathcult of neoliberalism. These movements weaponize the language of activism, but their actions serve fascist goals of division and destruction.
This is the core of #stupidindividualism poison that neoliberalism breeds, isolated people and erodes the collective bonds necessary for transformative activism. This individualism poisons movements, turning them into echo chambers of self-interest rather than engines of solidarity.
Even the conservatives think we are in a mess
Ideas for antidotes, reclaiming activism for progressive change:
* Redefine activism anchored in solidarity, and collective care, rejecting hate and fear as tactics. Clearly differentiate between activism (which builds and unites) and fascism (which destroys and divides).
* Center collective narratives, move beyond postmodern fragmentation by building shared stories and visions for the future. Activism that connects people to a larger purpose and community. Embrace horizontal structures, by foster decentralized and inclusive decision-making processes, thus reducing reliance on vertical, personality-driven leadership. This actively counters #stupidindividualism with collaborative frameworks like the #4opens.
* Focus on systems and paths, not individuals, shift away from individual heroics and saviour complexes. Build tools and strategies that empower communities rather than centring individuals.
* Reclaim language, use honest language to name problems and solutions. Call hate-based movements what they are, fascist. Avoid diluting terms like “activism” with actions that lack integrity and constructive purpose.
Building a liveable, humanistic future, needs us, to reclaiming activism, grounding in principles that resist the #mainstreaming influence and cultural by-products like #stupidindividualism. Movements that reject hate and fear as tactics, fostering instead the solidarity needed to challenge oppression and resulting environmental destruction. The antidote lies in collective care, shared purpose, and tools like the #4opens to ensure accountability and #KISS progress. We need foundations to build from, with this we counter the cultural decay of the #deathcult and take paths toward meaningful, sustainable change we really need.
The resurgence of grassroots radical media projects requires a return to foundational principles, particularly the embrace of #FOSS and #opensource practices. These principles align with the #4opens framework, which acts as both a lock and a key for building sustainable and accountable media networks.
The Basics, Activism vs. Mainstreaming, where activism aims to resist and redirect the mainstream toward progressive change. #Mainstreaming, on the other hand, often serves NGO agendas, softening resistance to maintain institutional stability and job creation for its participants. Recognizing this distinction helps grassroots projects avoid being co-opted into reducing systemic change to incremental tweaks.
The importance of #FOSS and #4opens in keeping radical media transparent and accessible. The #4opens (open process, open data, open licenses, and open standards) ensure inclusivity and guard against #mainstreaming dilution. These principles help create paths accountable to people, not funders and institutions.
Core vs. Periphery: OMN prioritizes the 1% of technologies and workflows that align with human-focused projects, filtering out the shiny distractions of mainstream tech. Guided by the PGA Hallmarks, the project adheres to these anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and grassroots-oriented principles to ensure alignment with long-term goals rather than fleeting trends. This challenges, right-wing coordination, the right has effectively leveraged #openweb media over the last decade, outpacing the left in cooperation and strategy. To counter this, the left must embrace collaborative frameworks like the #4opens and avoid falling into isolated #stupidindividualism. Verbiage and Focus is an issue, academia often overcomplicates the discourse, leading to a churn of ideas without actionable outcomes. Projects need clear plans that balance innovation with practical implementation.
Avoiding the #deathcult of neoliberalism, most mainstream tech assumes human nature is fixed by 40 years of neoliberalism, building reactionary systems. Grassroots projects reject this limitation and design tools that reflect the full spectrum of human potential. To move, we need to leverage experience, older activists should gently guide enthusiastic newcomers by asking, “How does this work with the #4opens?” and “Does this further the PGA hallmarks?” This approach fosters accountability and focus without stifling creativity. A core part of this is filtering technology, to avoid getting lost in the tech world’s “stinky, shiny fashions.” Focus on tools that genuinely empower communities rather than perpetuate #mainstreaming.
Build humanistic tools, to stop creating isolated, individualist solutions, tools fostering collaboration across diverse movements. Reboot proven models, starting new projects in a world dominated by #stupidindividualism leads to often to fragmentation. Instead, reboot and modernize successful past initiatives like #Indymedia, grounding them in the #4opens and #KISS federated governance.
The time is ripe for a #reboot of the alt/grassroots tech world. By centring projects on transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration, we can counter the forces of #deathcult neoliberalism and #mainstreaming. The #OMN is a framework for this sustainable and impactful radical media, to make us ready to sift through the tech pile and find the tools that serve humanity. Join the effort to help shape the future of grassroots media and governance. Learn more at OMN
The #geekproblem highlights a recurring issue within tech-driven movements, the overemphasis on control and complexity at the expense of accessibility, community, and collective goals. This “problem” arises from the intersection of tendencies toward hierarchy, a blind reverence for technology as inherently powerful (#deathcult worship), and the unchecked growth of technical complexity over the last few decades. This diverges from the principles of #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
Control as an Obsession is the invisible insecurity that blinds this path. The desire for control has deep roots, where order, precision, and predictability are prioritized above all else. In tech communities, this translates into over-engineering, with complex solutions that are difficult for non-technical people to engage with. Leading to exclusion and often to gatekeeping through jargon, obscure processes, and rigid technical hierarchies. This is tech #Fetishism, and leads to a belief in technology’s ability to solve any problem, with almost no understanding of the side lining social or political paths this come with.
This fixation, and resulting intolerance, leads to systems that might be technically impressive but fail to serve any broader community, producing another wave of #techshit that then needs work to compost In this path, the #deathcult represents the blind worship of systems and ideologies that lead to direct harm to us.
The #KISS principal advocates for simplicity and accessibility, ensuring systems are intuitive and usable by the wider community groups that need them. The #geekproblem runs counter to this, by alienating the very communities tech projects are meant to serve and widening the gap between technical experts and everyday people, perpetuating inequality in access and understanding.
Taking the “problem” out of geek, we must rebalance priorities by shifting dev focus on people over technology. Build systems and networks that empower and include rather than control and exclude. Embrace simplicity, with #4opens, prioritizing usability, transparency, and community feedback to make tools accessible. Actively challenge tech fetishism by pushing of technology as a tool, not an end in itself.
Solutions must address social and political dimensions by decentralize, this can be hard as all the code is in the end is about centralize authority in the hands of a few technical “elites”. But, the #geekproblem is not insurmountable, solving it simply requires a shift in mindset. By rejecting control-driven hierarchies and embracing collaborative simplicity, we build systems and networks that serve the people they’re meant to empower.
One of the core’s of #stupidindividualism is the fantasy that we, as individuals, can personally solve the most catastrophic problems. This mindset aligns with neoliberalism’s ideology, which denies the importance of collective action and reduces challenges to a personal responsibility. #Neoliberalism convinces us that our only role is as solitary actors. Instead of organizing or building solidarity, we’re told to “vote with our wallets” or “solve problems ourselves,” with consumers trying to recycle their way out of the #climatecrisis.
Why this benefits the nasty few, it isolates us, keeping us from organizing real challenge’s to power structures that push the current mess. It frames systemic failures as individual failings. If you’re underpaid or exploited, it’s not because the system is broken—it’s because you didn’t negotiate well enough or switch jobs fast enough. It turns political engagement into pointless and addictive consumer choice, where spending habits are treated as activism, ensuring the richest always win no matter what you think you are doing.
How this is reflected in our reality with #climatechaos, we’ve been told to recycle or reduce waste individually, but systemic corporate pollution and pro corporate regulation are the actual culprits. With elections, unlimited campaign spending by the wealthy transforms democracy into a farce, where their financial “votes” drown out grassroots movements. With labour rights, workers are urged to negotiate alone with bosses rather than unionizing, perpetuating exploitation.
This path fosters disillusionment and helplessness, trapping us in a cycle of meaningless individual gestures when what’s needed are collective, systemic changes. It’s not just ineffective; it’s designed to keep the status quo intact. Breaking free means rejecting the “stupid” part of individualism and embracing solidarity, cooperation, and paths that prioritize shared well-being over personal mess.
Please lift your head from worshipping this aspect of the #deathcult
It’s easy to see now that the world is a mess, and we have made this mess, we have collectively ripped apart our common humanist path. On part of this I talk about is that we have spent 20 years squandering the #openweb tools of liberation and connection. In our hyper-connected era, attention has become the currency of capitalism The #dotcons tools we were pushed in to believing were empowering—apps, platforms, systems—were always instruments of control. They’re not just tools for us, they’re manipulative mechanisms engineered to shape focus and erode our autonomy, they are tools of social control.
Your attention, once an inherent to you, is now a resource being siphoned without your consent or in most people’s understanding any attention. In the #mainstreaming path, it’s as if you’re holding an account you never opened, and every time you try to tap into your own focus, you find it already spent. The result? A hollowed-out version of yourself: overwhelmed, perpetually distracted, unknowingly complicit in your own digital and social exploitation. Welcome to the ‘obsession economy,’ where the most valuable product is you.
This isn’t some unintended consequence; it’s by design. Every endless scroll, every notification, every “you might like” pop-up is a calculated move designed to map your behaviour, desires, and unconscious tendencies. The current #mainstreaming path is clear: make you a predictable machine that clicks, buys, and reacts—repeatedly. And these #dotcons systems have perfected their craft of control.
The science is well known: our dopamine pathways are hijacked and held hostage. Each surrender refines the technique, locking us into feedback loops that make each swipe feel both essential and unsatisfying. The distraction is by design; the purpose is to keep you from noticing who is profiting from this economy of fractured attention.
We still cling to the illusion of control, this is a core definition of the #geekproblem, believing ourselves to be savvy navigators of our own choices. But put your phone down for a day, and you’ll feel the “phantom itch” of notifications that never came. Try to watch a show without scrolling through social media, and you’ll feel the discomfort of a single, unshared thought. The system is built to make us fear boredom and flee from stillness because those rare moments are where self-awareness could break through. And self-awareness? That’s bad for our worship of this #deathcult.
So, how do we start to reclaim what has been taken? You don’t need to start big, but you do need to start relentless. Think of it as a focus detox. Eliminate all non-essential notifications. Reclaim your mornings—don’t let them be dictated by a screen. Cultivate moments of true presence, where attention isn’t an asset being exploited but a gift to be savoured. Then bring this fresh focus to create a community around the change and challenge that we so obviously need.
Lift your heads from worshipping this deathcult. In a world obsessed with monetizing every moment of focus, remember: your attention is yours to guard. Without it, the real ‘you’ is another asset on someone else’s balance sheet. This ends very badly #climatechaos is a small part of the mess we have made and are making.
The dominance of the free market, for the last 40 years personified by the #deathcult worship, has instilled in us a deep-rooted belief in the power of market-driven signals as a determinant of value and action. This belief system prioritizes capital and greed as the primary forces that drive progress and social development. However, as our world becomes increasingly digitized, it’s past time to rethink and replace these signals with something more sustainable and aligned with collective welfare: #opendata signalling based on the #4opens.
Market signalling, a core tenet of capitalism, operates on the assumption that prices, supply, and demand efficiently communicate the state of the economy. These signals guide decisions across industries, influencing everything from resource allocation to investment trends. While this system has propelled economic growth, it comes at a significant cost: environmental degradation, social inequality, and systemic exploitation. In resent years, our worship of this “free market” led to an economy built on misery—a #miseryeconomy where people and communities pay to escape the hardships imposed by the very system they are part of.
The open vs. closed data dichotomy is currently largely invisible, so good to bring focus on this path. When considering alternatives to market signalling, we need to explore the difference between open and closed data paths. The original #openweb was built on the #4opens principles —open source, open data, open standards, and open processes. These fostered transparency, collaboration, and equitable growth. However, the rise of the #dotcons over the past two decades introduced #closeddata silos that have stifled and blocked this native path. Closed data systems prioritize proprietary algorithms, user data and metadata hoarding, and opaque decision-making processes. This has been used to reinforcing capital-driven signals as the only path.
In the emerging #openweb ecosystem, there is a new model—one rooted in opendata signalling. Unlike market signals driven by profit, opendata signalling operates on transparent and shared data inputs that inform decision-making across communities. This shift prioritizes communal benefits, sustainability, and builds trust. This path can only be glimpsed in the messy #fashionista driven #openweb reboot we are a part of. Consider the surge in decentralized networks such as #Mastodon, the broader #Fediverse, #BlueSky, and #Nostr. Over the past years, these have grown from a few hundred thousand users to tens of millions, highlighting an appetite for more community-driven paths. Open-source platforms like WordPress are integrating ActivityPub to support decentralization, extending open data practices to a quarter of the web. Even #dotcons corporations like #Facebook (with its #Threads initiative) are adapting to this movement, albeit with a corporate agenda.
What opendata signaling looks like? In a practical sense, opendata signalling means that any institution or person running a Mastodon instance, for example, can access a significant portion of the Fediverse’s content as plain text in their database. This access allows communities to collaboratively analyse and act on data without the current corporate intermediaries distorting and monetizing it for control.
Imagine policymaking informed by real-time public discourse, free from the profit-driven filters of major platforms. Local governments could tap into decentralized data to plan infrastructure, health initiatives, or educational reforms that reflect actual community needs. Environmental policies could be shaped by transparent data on ecological impact, rather than suppressed by industry lobbyists protecting capital interests.
Challenges and Considerations? Transitioning to opendata signalling isn’t without challenges. Regulation and policy will need to adapt to safeguard open data’s integrity and prevent exploitation. The fear of spam and manipulation, which critics often raise, must be addressed with intelligent design and community moderation. Yet, these challenges are surmountable compared to the unsustainable trajectory of a market that fails to act collectively for basic ssurvivallet along the greater good.
Moving beyond worship, with our reverence for the “free market” as an ultimate arbiter has reached its limit. By embracing opendata signaling and shifting away from closed, profit-driven paths, we create a foundation where collaboration, sustainability, and shared progress are at the forefront. This is not only a technological shift but a cultural one, As we continue this transition, let’s recognize that our digital choices will dictate whether we uphold the values of the #openweb or fall back into the restrictive practices of #closeddata. Let’s try to have a real conversation about this, please.
Twitter was the shining light of the priests of the #deathcult, and there liberal apologists, it was a “safe space” for our liberals to chatter about #mainstreaming and avoid the change and challenge we need to survive in the era of #climatechaos and the breakdown, that our 40 years of this worship has brought us. This has now changed to a much more direct hard right shift.
This has shifted with Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) which has shifted the platform’s political alignment and governance from this #deathcult worship to a more fascist path. It is easy to see that Musk’s ownership and decision-making have pushed this move toward authoritarian far-right ideologies.
Content moderation and policy changes, under #Musk, #X has made policy shifts on content moderation. These changes have allowed the platform to become a space where misinformation and extremist rhetoric proliferates. This shift to reduce oversight opens a space for echo chambers for polarized and extreme views.
Reinstating controversial hard right figures, this decision to reinstate previously banned accounts, including high-profile far-right figures and conspiracy theorists, has fuelled the shaping of the platform to support overt political agendas. This has bolstered the support for right wing politics, including Donald Trump, who was permanently banned from Twitter before Musk’s takeover due to incitement of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Public statements and affiliations, Musk’s public engagements and interactions have shifted to a hard right path. His tweets and public endorsements aligned with viewpoints and individuals who support right-wing and populist ideologies. This has led to that growing environment which subtly or overtly supports authoritarian and nationalist movements, the growth of fascism.
Fascism implies systematic oppression and state-level control, which is the outcome of his purchase of this one’s liberal social network. What can deferentially be said is that this is a partisan platform that is supportive of right-wing populism. And as can be seen with the election of Trump, it is being used to facilitating the growth of fascism in the USA and the wider world.
The current #mainstreaming paths are dependent on capitalist structures, when looking at this critically, it reveals itself as a #deathcult, with the embodiment of unrestrained growth and consumption that runs counter to meaningful solution to #climatechange. While billionaires and corporatens may entertain the illusion of future-proofing their wealth and safety, the reality is more perilous than it appears to this narrow view. Their greed fed opulence and influence can’t shield them indefinitely from a collapsing ecosystem that sustains all life, including their own.
At the heart of this is the inherent contradiction in capitalism itself: it requires perpetual growth to survive. This expansion is incompatible with the measures needed to mediate or stop #climatechaos. But if growth halts, so does the economic machinery that upholds the current power structures, creating a destabilizing domino effect. While many might ask why those in power do not pivot to prioritize environmental preservation, the answer lies in the system’s relentless demand for expansion. Even if an individual capitalist—or a consortium—decides to scale back for the sake of long-term planetary health, the market will simply replace them with competitors who are more willing to pursue relentless profit, growth, and resource consumption.
The current path has a self-destructive logic, this paradox is why even billionaires who are conscious of the dire climate situation resort to insufficient and infective measures. They might fund green technologies and push for marginally lower carbon emissions, but the actions remain constrained by the underlying logic: protecting the continuity of capital. This capital-only world-view can’t embrace the radical systemic change we actually need to avert ecological collapse.
Let’s look at this, billionaires and the bunker illusion, the ultra-wealthy/greedy #fuckwits, plan to retreat to their fortified bunkers and private, insulated zones once climate-induced chaos grows un medateable. While contingency plans do exist—high-tech shelters, land acquisitions in regions predicted to be less affected by climate change—these are temporary solutions. A world unravelling from the fabric of its ecosystems will not sustain even the most fortified enclaves indefinitely. Even if technology advances to the point of enabling space colonization, the timelines required for such ventures far exceed the immediacy of the crisis we keep #blindly pushing.
This is an easy to understand systematic issue, and it should be obvuse we need a collective solution. Capital, the motivation and power for action, is not about individual capitalists but capital as an entity, the dogmatic socio-economic phenomenon that exerts control over its arbiters. Capital has built in infinite growth, prioritizing profit over sustainability and long-term human survival. An individual or collective attempt to defy this logic and implement meaningful, planet-preserving strategies would be outpaced and outcompeted by others who align more closely with capital’s pushing of this #stupidindividualism, ruthless, greed is good.
This #KISS understanding underscores the distinction between idealist and materialist interpretations of the crisis. Idealists believe that with enough awareness and willpower, the system can change from within. Materialists, recognize that capital is a structure that acts beyond the control of any individual or organization. It functions like biological evolution: it values reproduction and expansion above survival, when as we see now those traits are in the end destructive.
There is some room for corrective action within the existing system, but it’s inadequate. Policies to mitigate environmental impact, even when enacted, are slow and piecemeal. The issue isn’t that #mainstreaming decision-makers don’t understand the problem; rather, they don’t grasp the depth of systemic overhaul required to address it. The principles they consider immutable—the rules of modern economics and finance. The “common sense” is the problem.
The #deathcult of mainstreaming is propelling growth and consumption despite ecological warnings, it is locked in a dance with CAPITALS logic. While billionaires may fund clean energy startups and talk about sustainable practices, their wealth and the power structures uphold and are bound up in the unsustainable status quo. Change and challenge requires uprooting fundamental beliefs about how economies MUST operate, not just superficial adaptations. Until this realization is spread, capital will continue on its path, indifferent to the ruins it leaves.
Best not to be a prat about this, thanks.
Why Capitalism and Climate Change Solutions Are Fundamentally Incompatible
The urgent need to address climate change collides with an uncomfortable reality, as we outline capitalism’s foundational mechanics make meaningful climate action impossible. This isn’t a case of individual negligence but a systemic flaw. Capitalism, by design, prioritizes profit and growth, at the expense of long-term, collective concerns and environmental preservation.
Capitalism favours the greedy few who can maximize profits in the shortest timeframe. It’s a path where the most ruthless and nasty competitor prevails, setting the standard that others must follow or face obsolescence. This constant pressure means that if an individual capitalist or company recognizes the existential threat of #climatechaos, they cannot afford to act on it meaningfully without losing their competitive edge. For example, a corporation that decides to limit emissions at the cost of profitability will quickly be outcompeted by one that does not.
The logic of capitalism ensures that any significant deviation from maximizing short-term profit results in failure within the market. Thus, while some companies engage in “green” initiatives to pay lip service to sustainability, these efforts are superficial. They exist to placate public concern and leverage marketing advantages, rather than drive the needed systemic change. The myths are that capitalism, through innovation and competition, will solve climate change. However, capitalist solutions boil down to maintaining leverage and coercing others into action. For example, the race for green technologies like electric cars and renewable energy can be more about dominating a new market sector than reducing environmental harm. Elon Musk’s ventures into space and sustainable technology, hailed as forward-thinking, illustrate this principle. Space colonization and technological fixes reflect an expansionist mindset, a search for new “territories” to exploit as resources on Earth dwindle.
Capitalism’s path needs to push costs onto external parties, the public and the environment. The system relies on government-funded infrastructure and socialized costs, as seen with subsidies for oil companies, highway construction for the automotive industry, or public bailouts for corporations in crisis. When it comes to addressing #climatechange, this reliance on externalized costs becomes a liability. The climate crisis is a global “cost” that capitalism, left unchecked, will not address willingly. It requires collective action that contradicts capitalism’s individualistic and profit-driven paths. This is why capitalist markets require regulation by state or more importantly collective paths to function at all or sustainably, and even then, such measures face fierce resistance.
The automation age: how the nasty few plans to survive. The question whether billionaires believe they can weather the storm of #climatecollapse is complex. Many of them, seeing the unsustainability of infinite growth, look for exit strategies. This explains the investments in space travel, underground bunkers, and gated communities. The implication is stark: they believe their wealth will shield them from the mass suffering climatechange will bring. Automation adds another layer to this story. With machines replacing human labour, the exploiters envision a future where their economic power persists without the masses of real people, that’s you and me. This dystopian reality shows the detachment of capital from human and ecological concerns.
We currently face a failure of collective action. One of capitalism’s critical flaws is its inability to coordinate collective action without state intervention. While some countries have managed to decouple emissions from #GDP growth through advancements in service sectors and digital economies, this decoupling remains insufficient to meet the global targets needed for net-zero emissions. The system’s piecemeal and reactive approach cannot match the scale of planning required for real and needed climate action. Without a fundamental restructuring that prioritizes the collective good over private profit, meaningful progress remains an illusion and out of reach.
The political power that Silicon Valley and Big Tech pushed over this election is a real #geekproblem threat, with the #dotcons leveraging technological and financial influence to shape society in ways that benefit the nasty few and undermine basic democratic paths we need to be fallowing to mediate #climatechaos
One path to balance this #mainstreaming mess making is the need for active and healthy critiques of the lack of institutional support for #openweb projects and paths that focus on humanistic alternatives to these Big Tech platforms. The problem we need to challange is that organizations theoretically supportive of democratic values, such as #NLNet and #NGI, sideline core “native” paths in tech as “too radical”, instead favouring safe narrow #geekproblem and #NGO tech paths which we know do not work. This is frustrating, and with the increasing authoritarianism spreading worldwide, it’s a part of the #deathcult we all worship.
The “geekproblem” in tech is about challenges arising from the culture and mindset within technical communities, particularly around developers and engineers. It is associated with an overemphasis on technical solutions, insularity, and a tendency to prioritize technological efficiency or novelty over broader social and ethical considerations.
Overemphasis on Technical Solutions: People involved in tech prioritize creating or improving technical features while overlooking social impacts or peoples needs. This leads to “solutionism,” where every problem is assumed to have a tech-based answer, neglecting simpler, social, or policy-based solutions.
Insularity and Group Think: The tech world is insular, with tight-knit subcultures that resist input from outside communities and dismiss perspectives that don’t align with technical paths. This leads to narrow solutions and a resistance to the needer wider perspectives, ultimately #blocking the social change and challenge we need.
Focus on Control over Collaboration: Tech communities are often defacto hierarchical, top-down in the paths of design and governance, leading to a “we know best” paths. This often alienates non-technical people and discourages cooperative and participatory input, making it hard to integrate open, community-based governance in to the narrow paths that are imposed.
Ignoring and Dismissing Social Issues: Focused on technical work overlook social issues the tech is supposed to be addressing and solving. By focusing only on engineering, they overlook who has access to the technology, who benefits from it, and what ethical implications it brings, perpetuating the disconnect between technology and the communities it made for.
Resistance to Broadening Perspective: Tech creators actively resist moving beyond their own narrow areas of expertise and interest, they block ideas and initiatives that don’t fit within their immediate understanding, inhibiting growth and the needed experimentation. This resistance limits meaningful progress, community needs, and alternative technologies.
In sum, the #geekproblem stems from a blend of narrow technical focus, resistance to diverse input, and lack of attention to social impact. Addressing it involves building more inclusive, collaborative, and socially aware tech paths that embrace #4opens broader perspectives beyond the purely technical.
In the online spaces I navigate, there’s no shortage of #fashernistas crowding the conversation, diverting focus from the native #openweb paths we urgently need to explore. They take up space and ultimately block more than they build. Then there’s the #geekproblem: while geeks get things done within narrow boundaries, they’re rigidly resistant to veering beyond their lanes, dogmatically shutting down alternatives to the world they’re so fixated on controlling. This produces a lot of #techshit, occasionally innovations, but with more that needs composting than the often limited value they create.
Then there are the workers, many of whom default to the #NGO path. Their motivations lean toward self-interest rather than collective good, masking this in liberal #mainstreaming dressed up as activism. At worst, they’re serving the #deathcult of neoliberalism; at best, they’re upholding the status quo. This chaotic mix dominates alternative culture, as it always has, and the challenge is one of balance. Right now, we have more to compost than we have to plant and build with.
What would a functioning alternative to this current mess in alt paths look like? Well we don’t have to look far as there is a long history of working alt culture, and yes I admit it “works” in messy and sometimes dysfunctional ways, but it works. What can we learn and achieve from taking this path and mating it with modern “native #openweb technology, which over the last five years has managed in part to move away from the #geekproblem with #ActivityPub and the #Fediverse.
Blending the resilience and collective spirit of historical alternative cultures with the new strengths of federated, decentralized tech solutions like ActivityPub and the Fediverse, the path we need to take:
Community-Centric Design: Historically, alternative cultures prioritize more communal, open, and egalitarian paths. The path out of this mess need to be rooted in this ethos, a new alt-tech landscape could leverage federated technology to avoid centralization and corporate control, emphasizing community ownership. The Fediverse, with its decentralized model, embodies this shift, each instance is a unique community with shared norms, which helps to protect against centralized censorship and allows diversity without imposing a single dominant path.
Resilient, Messy, and Organic Growth: A #KISS lesson from traditional alternative spaces is that success doesn’t require perfect order. Alt-culture spaces thrive on a degree of chaos and adaptability, which enables rapid response to new challenges and paths. This messiness aligns with how decentralized systems function: they’re, resilient, while letting communities develop their own norms and structures while remaining connected to a larger network.
Mediating the #Geekproblem: A key challenge in the tech space is overcoming the “problem” geeks, where technical cultures focus narrowly on technical functionality at the expense of accessibility and inclusiveness. ActivityPub and Fediverse have shifted this by prioritizing people-centric design and by being open to non-technical contributions. Integrating more roles from diverse social paths—designers, community, activists—can bridge gaps between tech-focused and community-focused paths.
Using #4opens Principles: The “#4opens” is native to #FOSS philosophy—open data, open source, open process, and open standards—guide this ecosystem. By adopting transparency in governance and development, communities foster trust and accountability. This openness discourages monopolistic behavior, increases collaboration, and enables #KISS accountability.
Sustainable Engagement Over Growth: Unlike the current #dotcons model that focuses on endless growth and engagement metrics, the alternative path prioritizes quality interactions, trust-building, and meaningful contributions. This sustainable engagement path values people’s experience and community health over data extraction and advertising revenue.
Leveraging Federated Technology for Cross-Pollination: ActivityPub has shown that federated systems don’t have to be isolated silos; they can be connected in a openweb of interlinked communities. Just as historical alt-cultures drew strength from diversity and exchange, the Fediverse path allows for collaboration and cross-pollination between communities while maintaining autonomy.
By integrating these native #openweb principles, we create an alt-tech ecosystem that is democratic, inclusive, and resistant to the mess that currently plague #mainstreaming and some alt-tech paths. This hybrid path allows tech to serve communities authentically, fertilising sustainable growth and meaningful, collective agency that we need in this time to counter the mainstream mess.
Reflecting on the last 40 years, it’s clear that the trajectory toward #climatechaos has been pushed by the entrenchment of corporate power and increasing capital-driven approach to global challenges. This era, the “neoliberal” era, normalized policies that favoured deregulation, privatization, and financialization. This shift didn’t just allow corporations to thrive; it redefined our social priorities, encouraging a culture where profit overshadows community and basic environmental welfare. These #deathcult worshippers have permeated public institutions and policies, making it harder for grassroots systemic change to take root.
The liberal majority, typically positioned between activism and power, has been to side with the “#mainstreaming” approach, which, while sometimes not as overtly destructive as corporate power, clearly lack the willingness to disrupt the status quo. These liberals express concern over climate change but favour “market-friendly” reforms that repeatedly fail to challenge or change the root causes of the #climatecrisis. This creates a paradox: despite their environmental concerns, they end up blocking radical changes. On the fluffy side, movements like Extinction Rebellion (#XR) and initiatives like the Open Media Network (#OMN) highlight how pushing this middle ground to support change—not just acknowledge it—is essential for challenging entrenched powers.
The OMN serves as an example of a shift from centralized, profit-driven platforms toward community-based, participatory paths. Unlike platforms that build on capital agendas, the OMN draws from grassroots energy and shared values, allowing it to organically support social goals. This shift is key: if OMN and similar #openweb initiatives grow, they’ll likely reflect their foundation—community engagement and shared purpose—versus the profit-at-all-costs paths.
While the liberal centre currently act as a buffer zone that resists necessary change, supporting projects like OMN can help reshape this middle ground by creating an accessible alternative to #mainstreaming stories and corporate lies. In this sense, belief—especially in sustainable community-driven projects—becomes a tool for social transformation. And belief is crucial; without a sense of possibility, it’s easy for people to fall into cynicism and adopt the fear-based messaging spread by right-wing agendas
The challenge is to compost the “bourgeois struggle” between conflicting nasty interests by promoting grassroots, #4opens paths and projects that focus on cooperation, transparency, and community.
This is my reaction from the talk, have not read the book.
In The Forever Crisis, the author presents complex systems thinking as a framework for addressing the world’s intractable challenges, particularly at the level of global governance. The book critiques the traditional top-down approaches that are pushed by powerful institutions like the #UN, highlighting how these solutions are a mismatched for complex, interwoven issues like #climatechange, security, finance, and digital governance.
One of the core issues raised is that global governance structures are failing to keep pace with the crises they are supposed to address. Traditional approaches “silo” issues, handling them in isolation, which makes it hard for messy interconnected challenges to be addressed in a holistic way. For example, while climate change is universally recognized as a priority, the complex “network of governance” is fragmented, leaving institutions like the UN and #IPCC struggling to effectively drive change. These traditional, siloed paths reflect a short-term vision, prioritizing superficial “silver bullet” solutions over systemic, transformative approaches.
A complex systems approach, likening effective governance to networks such as the “mushrooms under the forest floor”—resilient, interconnected, and adaptable. Rather than rigid, top-down mandates, this metaphor supports creating flexible, networked governance structures that can adapt to shifting crises. The notion of cascading solutions is key here: solutions should ripple across systems in a way that amplifies positive outcomes, rather than relying solely on isolated, large-scale interventions.
The talk highlights how unready we are for institutional preparedness and adaptive governance, with the importance of adaptability in governance, particularly in preparing for shocks, both anticipated and unanticipated. Using COVID-19 as an example, he critiques the over-reliance on “luck” rather than robust structures, suggesting that governance systems must be nimble and interconnected enough to absorb shocks without collapsing. Currently, we have a fasard, the UN and other agencies are trying to act as “confidence boosters,” convincing themselves of their own effectiveness.
Challenges to implementing complexity in governance, despite the potential of complexity theory, the talk raises significant questions about implementation. Power structures are deeply entrenched in traditional governance systems, making it difficult to shift away from rigid, reactive models. Further, financial systems tend to funnel resources into quick-fix solutions rather than funding long-term, adaptive responses.
My though, about the talk on mainstream solutions, touches on an essential question: can the existing structures within the “#deathcult” of neoliberalism actually provide the transformation we need? This perspective aligns with the book’s critique, questioning whether today’s dominant structures can truly embrace a complexity-oriented approach to governance. To solve this I focus on #Indymediaback, #OMN, and #OGB as grassroots projects which underlines an alternative that prioritizes local, networked, and community-driven solutions—a departure from the centralized and out-of-touch responses typical of global governance.
The book’s focus on complexity theory as a tool to facilitate self-organizing, resilient systems could be a powerful argument for the decentralized path I advocate. This framework validates the idea that change might be more effectively driven from the grassroots, where diverse actors work in networked patterns that reflect the natural resilience seen in ecosystems.
The talk:
Join Thomas Hale, Professor in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, and Adam Day, Head of UN University Centre for Policy Research in Geneva, as they discuss Day’s newest book The Forever Crisis.
The Forever Crisis is an introduction to complex systems thinking at the global governance level. It offers concepts, tools, and ways of thinking about how systems change that can be applied to the most wicked problems facing the world today. More than an abstract argument for complexity theory, the book offers a targeted critique of today’s highest-profile proposals for improving the governance of our environment, security, finance, health, and digital space. It suggests that we should spend less effort and resources on upgrading existing institutions, and more on understanding how they (and we) relate to each other.
My thinking and notes.
Its the #NGO crew talking about my subject, this is a professor and the #UN secretary generals adviser. Start with basic complexity, telling a normal story.
Globalisation drives complexity, the nudge theory, the network of governance which we have to manage. Use the IPCC as a tool, but this is a mess. The argument for big solutions, top down is a bad fit for complexity thinking. The solution is tendicalse? Or the mushrooms under the forest floor, network metaphor.
Shifting tipping point, to shift change
Long problems demand complexity, current risk is undervalued
Transformative global governance, or our current global governance could go extinct.
We have a anufe data, for AI to be used as early warning “advising” governance.
So this is main-streaming looking at change and mediating the challenge. Whether it works at all is an open question, looking unlikely looking around the room.
He says we can’t co-operate, and in his terms this is correct. The solution is to try and “trick” the current systems to work together, don’t think he gets beyond this.
UN women calls the current path a failer, and that this is ongoing, but MUCH more urgent now.
In the report, the silos were knitted together, but nobody understood this, so then it was unpacked into sloes so that people could accept it.
The conference that did this report, was in a large part a confidence booster that the current systems could actually work. This is a very small step. No war was won.
The is a consensus that the current process is failing, and needs to change to challenge the current structures. The problem of re-siloing, the crumbling of bridges as they are being built, the outcome the establishment is still blocking the needed bridging.
For him, the ideas don’t create transformation. They spent a year going over old agreements, the new issues were not focused on. This was a problem of trust and transparency. So the whole process was knocked back a year.
Is this change easer or harder during crises? We tend to think that crises creates flexibility, but he argues they hold together stronger when change might be happening? She points to the defence crotch, that change is being blocked by the crises, it’s complex.
Are any of the current institutions fit to governing #AI
Finance funds silver bulite solutions rather than long term solutions. Quick fix, fixes nothing, its funding pored down the drain. His solution is a real cost on carbon if we can get the spyware command and control right to make this work.
On chip verification, hardcoded spy and control in our chips… now this is a very #geekproblem idea.
Can the states raise to work, she says we hope so 🙂 as the is no alternative 🙁 we won’t states to work, in partnership with the private secturer… we need the UN to preform its function, that partners with other actors, private structure, civil society etc.
Capacity building is 10% of the climate budget, this is about writing PDF’s, the people doing the change are simply not there.
Q. on the time to act, with the example of Gorbertrov and the claps of the Soviet Union.
Resilience is not a good thing, if the thing that is resilients are paths are not working.
Can we bake in a long term path into current decisions?
How can we change the existing system so that it balances?
The word leadership, that individuals playing a role, to be the change, is a subject that excites them.
My question would have been, the #deathcult – is the any actors or forces outside this cult – that you see could be the change we need?
He, Cascading solutions across the system fast enough to be the change we need?
She, better preparedness for the shocks, so we can pull together. To deal with issues we have not anticipated. We are not there yet.
