With rebooting the #openweb we run headfirst into the #geekproblem, a recurring pattern where: Technically brilliant people build powerful tools …but those tools remain socially unusable …or solve only geek problems, not the needs of actual communities. It’s not malice, often it’s idealism, but it creates a dead-end culture of endless prototypes, abandoned standards, and empty tech demos. Meanwhile, the real-world crisis deepens.
The work we need is bridges building, let’s try this ere “P2P news app” built on #dat Hypercore/Hyperswarm is exciting. Yes, it’s similar to Nostr in structure: distributed relays, client-side aggregation, unstoppable flow. But as with Nostr tech isn’t enough. We are social creatures. A usable system needs:
Clear use cases rooted in human relationships – not just tech possibilities.
User-facing front-ends that invite participation, not gate it.
Interoperability with existing protocols (ActivityPub, ATProto, etc.) to avoid siloing.
Bridges between architectures – e.g. client-server ↔ P2P – so that real-world adoption is gradual and survivable.
The good news, the wider #OMN project is already a sane path forward, with a #KISS hybrid path. The plan is in bridging #P2P and client-server as a way out of this. Something like:
A lightweight server bridge that serves data to client-server users (ActivityPub, fediverse, legacy web),
While simultaneously feeding a P2P mesh, with each peer storing and distributing redundant objects,
So that over time, client-server becomes the bootstrapping layer, and #P2P becomes the long-term archive + resistance layer.
“Data is just object flows – how the user gets the object is irrelevant technically.”
This is the kind of thinking that gets us out of the traps, by moving from protocols to people. This isn’t just about code, it’s about culture. The #geekproblem won’t be solved by more architecture diagrams, it needs movements that embrace imperfection and prioritizes social use, visible, working front-ends people can contribute to and understand, documentation and tooling that builds capacity in others, not silos around the brilliant few.
What next? For the devs:
Can the p2p-news-app codebase be modularized to plug into #OMN projects as a data backend, even in a basic way?
Can we bridge shared data objects across protocols (e.g. post metadata flows from P2P → ActivityPub), even if janky at first?
Can we prototype a simple but cross protocol usable frontend, the examples is the work on #makeinghistory and #indymediaback, that lets non-geeks see and touch the network they’re part of?
Yes, for the movement, keep things messy but moving. Avoid dead ends by always asking:
"How does this empower non-technical users to organize, document, and publish together?"
Keep the tech grounded in the social fabric, the activists, journalists, organisers, and rebels this is all meant to serve. If you’re reading this and thinking, “I can help,” please step forward. There’s space in wider tech/social #OMN and #MakingHistory for everyone, coders, writers, designers, testers and storytellers.
Let’s build bridges, not silos, let’s build tools people can use, not just tools geeks can admire, let’s do this together.
Looking back on the activist groups I’ve been part of over the past few decades, I find myself drawn to the messy business of memory. Not nostalgia – something more grounded. A desire to trace the arc of what happened, why it happened, and what it meant, both personally and politically.
But here’s the thing, this is not easy. Many of the people I worked alongside have internalised completely different versions of events. They remember different catalysts, attribute failure or success differently, or – in some cases – choose to forget entirely. Writing about this, even with care, risks reopening bad wounds. It challenges people settled myths. It can feel unkind.
So the question nags: is it useful to try? The answer, I think, is yes. Painful, imperfect, but necessary. Because, as George Santayana reminds us: “Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.”
And in our small corner of the world, radical media, grassroots tech, DIY networks, we repeat ourselves a lot. The cycle problem in media activism, is one of the most frustrating things, the endless circling of behaviour. We keep reinventing wheels, reliving the same dramas, walking into traps with our eyes wide open. Why? Because we don’t do history.
Or more precisely, we don’t keep our history. Our web resources disappear, servers shut down, backups get lost, important mailing lists become unreadable, whole communities vanish overnight, and the next wave thinks they’re starting from scratch. This amnesia isn’t accidental, it’s cultural. There’s an ingrained mentality among activists: “We invented this. This is new. We’re the first.” I’ve heard this too many times from people I know to be brilliant and thoughtful. It’s not arrogance, it’s isolation. A lack of intergenerational knowledge transfer.
And the result? Every new cycle repeats the last one’s mistakes, with slightly shinier tools and worse outcomes. Liberal histories are at the centre of this activist memory hole. Another reason to write this history down is that someone else will if we don’t, and when they are outside academics or #fashernistas they’ll get it wrong.
Here’s how it works, academics and #NGOs document movements, but only when they can draw from authoritative sources, often the institutions and individuals who have managed to embed themselves in respectable spaces. It’s safer for them to focus on official reports, named leaders, funded pilot projects, or case studies with neat, too often blinded, conclusions.
But grassroots work is messy by design, it’s often anonymous, decentralised, deliberately undocumented for safety and principle. When the official histories get written, they leave out the people who made the real changes happen. And worse, they reinforce liberal myths about how progress occurs: calm reason, funding applications, polite campaigns.
In truth, many of the most effective projects I’ve been part of were born in squats, kitchens, backrooms, stormy email threads, or chaotic hacklabs. They weren’t polished, they were alive. Take #Indymedia. I was there. I helped build and maintain some of it. I watched it rise, and fall. It was a revolution in online publishing and participatory journalism. It worked, until it didn’t. What killed it wasn’t just tech debt or burnout, it was a lack of historical grounding. We didn’t know how to document our process. We didn’t know how to pass on lessons. When things fractured, there was no record to return to, just fragments and gossip.
That’s part of why I started working on the #OMN (Open Media Network), and later the #indymediaback and #makeinghistory projects. These are attempts to not forget, to build infrastructure with memory baked in, and to do it in a way that resists co-option by the #NGO industrial complex or the liberal publishing gatekeepers. They are also efforts to balance individual and collective histories, to encode the process not just the outcomes, and to ground technology in shared political practice.
Should we document activist histories? Yes, because we keep losing what we built. Yes, because the next wave needs our shoulders to stand on, not just reinvent the same platforms with a shinier interface and worse governance. Yes, because remembering is a political act.
But we should do it with care, with plural narratives, not single heroes. We need archives that respect disagreement and dissonance. We need to document failure as much as success – not as shame, but as compost.
And we need to stop assuming the truth will speak for itself, it won’t, we have to speak it, even when it’s hard. Even when others remember it differently. This is not about gatekeeping. It’s about keeping gates open for others to come through.
If you were part of those times, I invite you to write your piece of it, even if it contradicts mine, especially if it does. If you weren’t, but you’re building now – take time to look back. Ask questions, find the old code, talk to the elders, search for the backups. Document your own work as you go, don’t let it vanish. History isn’t just past, it’s infrastructure. Let’s build some together.
The #fashionistas are coming https://yewtu.be/embed/u_Lxkt50xOg? It’s time to become more real before this inflow swamps our “native” reboot, if we let them they will consume it and shit it out as more mess. To mediate this shit storm, it’s time to act, please, feel free to repost these web posts, thanks.
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 – those directly affected by injustice – taking action with the tools they have. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, tech projects like #Indymedia were the blueprint: decentralized, radically open, and run by volunteers who trusted each other and worked horizontally. It worked, for a while.
Today, projects like #OMN (Open Media Network), #indymediaback, and #makeinghistory try to learn from that past. They aim to reboot media infrastructure and historical memory, powered by the #4opens: open data, open source, open standards, and open process. We need to remember that this kind of work doesn’t scale by magic, it grows from grounded trust and native infrastructure, not from #VC injections or #NGO grants.
The trap of #NGO thinking is one of the biggest reasons grassroots projects fail, co-optation. When grassroots groups chase funding, they start shifting agendas to fit the funder’s priorities. Slowly, the mission gets neutralized. Culture changes, risk-taking of change and challenge vanishes, the projects to often become empty shells wearing yesterday’s slogans.
This has happened time and again, from later #Indymedia nodes to #EU-funded tech projects that are now more about kickbox reports than what any “user” wonts or the needed basic radical change. We can’t afford to go down this path again in the current #openweb reboot, the Fediverse.
We need Spiky/Fluffy balance, mutual aid that’s not just charity, but infrastructure. That’s where the #Fediverse shines: not just as an alternative platform, but as a parallel public space for organizing, sharing, and then resisting. It has to support both spiky (radical, disruptive) and fluffy (care-focused, relational) approaches.
On these paths, memory matters, projects like #makeinghistory remind us: if we don’t remember our wins and losses, we’ll keep repeating the same mistakes. Documenting not just content but working practice, how decisions were made, what trust looked like, what failed and why – is crucial. History is not just a mirror; it’s compost.
No monoculture, today, #Mastodon is becoming the monoculture of the Fediverse. It’s not evil. But it is dominating to the point of distortion. It’s following NGO-friendly paths and watering down the radical possibilities the #openweb offers. That’s a problem. We need more balance, more useful codebases, more governance experiments. This space is meant to be a garden, not a plantation.
Security isn’t paranoia, it’s culture, security on the #openweb isn’t about creating another bureaucratic nightmare of permissions and logins. It’s about cultural practices, trust, openness, moderation by consent, and keeping things simple. Most of all, it’s about not building what you don’t need, complexity is the enemy of security.
Final thought, to build real alternatives, we need to stop chasing virality and start building resilience. Less hype, more humility. Less “engagement,” more entanglement. And always, a ruthless focus on not becoming the thing we were trying to replace. Let’s not feed the mess. Let’s compost it and grow something better.
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
High Ground, Low Future (2030–2040) • Begin with heavy rains and seasonal flooding becoming semi-permanent. • Newly built luxury flats on the floodplain (south and west Oxford) are damaged repeatedly, insurance pulled. • Middle-class families flee toward the older high ground of central Oxford, historically preserved college land. • Shortages emerge: housing, resources, space. The city’s delicate balance starts to tilt.
The Forgotten Periphery • Council estates and outer-suburbs, once neglected, now sink under economic collapse and water. • Local government, under austerity and national decline, offers only band-aids. • The media begins labelling displaced middle-class as “flood migrants.” Old class lines blur, but resentments remain.
Inflows (2040–2050) • Waves of international refugees arrive from southern Europe, North Africa, and beyond, fleeing unlivable heat, drought, and war. • They are pushed into the same abandoned, waterlogged spaces, flood basements, condemned buildings, unlivable prefab housing. • Tensions rise. Local institutions (universities, NGOs) create “managed zones” but lack democratic accountability.
PART TWO: THE CRACKING WALLS
Fortress Colleges • As central Oxford densifies, colleges physically re-fortify: fences, walls, biometric gates. • Students become increasingly isolated and elitist, a class divorced from the town they inhabit. • The university brands itself as a “climate solutions hub” while hoarding resources behind gates. • “Town and gown” tensions explode, again, as they have historically.
Survival Zones • #DIY mutual aid emerges on the periphery: squatted schools, rooftop farming, open food kitchens. • A rewilded floodplain becomes a hybrid of anarchic camp, cultural experiment, and survival zone. • #OMN-style p2p networks flourish, local comms, barter systems, radical #openmedia. • People from town and refugee groups begin building new alliances.
Crime and Resistance • As collapse deepens, black markets and violent survival economies grow. • A new urban underclass mixes class, background, and migration stories. • Armed policing returns. Protest turns to riot. A hybrid class-based rebellion takes shape.
PART THREE: THE NEW COMMONS
Walls Come Down (2060–2070) • A symbolic and literal breach of one of the oldest college walls (perhaps Magdalen or All Souls). • Historic parallels to the English Civil War, Chartism, and 1968 are drawn by media and rebels alike. • The breach isn’t just destruction, it opens a negotiation. Some colleges split, others double down.
New Governance Experiments • The city fractally reorganizes: into commons-based neighborhoods, flooded zones governed by cooperatives, and surviving elite zones. • #OGB and #4opens principles emerge as part of new grassroots councils and open documentation of resources and decisions. • Old institutions adapt or fall, Oxford becomes an unlikely testbed for post-collapse co-governance.
Epilogue: Memory and Flow (2080s) • A narrator looks back, possibly a second-gen refugee or an ex-college student who defected. • The floodplains are now permanent water-urban hybrids, people live, float, and thrive amid ruin. • The colleges that survived are museums or cooperatives. Others are ruins. • Oxford is no longer a university town, it is a city of memory, mess, and mutuality. • “The river won,” the narrator says. “And so did we, in the end. But only by letting go of what we were trying to hold onto.”
Character Arcs
• Leila – Teenage refugee who becomes an organiser in the rewilded zones. From scavenger to community focus.
• Tom – Displaced academic’s son, who rejects the college class and becomes a chronicler of the commons.
• Dr. Carter – Disillusioned researcher who defects from the university to join the resistance.
• Abigail Crowthorne – academic turned dictator
The Story
Introduces two of the protagonists – Tom and Leila – at a moment when the waters are rising and the old world is visibly breaking apart.
Chapter One: The Waters Came Back
Oxford, 2039. It had been raining for ten days. Not the gentle English drizzle of postcards and nostalgia. This was weight. Sheets of water crashing down in sudden violence, followed by hours of warm, oppressive mist. The kind of rain that sounded like static, like a broken signal. The kind that made you forget what dry felt like. Tom stood at the top of the Botley Ralway Bridge, shivering under a borrowed poncho, staring out at what used to be Oxford’s latest luxury housing development. “The Oxmoor Residences,” the billboard still proclaimed, water-stained and rusting. Behind it: rows of identical pale-brick buildings, their basements already submerged, their ground floors filling with thick brown water.
People had started calling this area “the bathtub.” Everyone said it with the same bitter half-joke. Half because it was funny to see posh flats drown. Half because some of them had lived there until last week.
His family had been lucky. Or connected. Or both. His dad, Professor Carter, still had access to rooms in the Merton College outer quad, though now it was just them. His mother had moved to Edinburgh, with a job and another life. Tom hadn’t gone. He liked the old city. Or had. Now, it felt like a ghost in slow motion. The water wasn’t receding. The storm drains were full. The rivers, the Thames and the Cherwell, had merged west of Christ Church Meadow. Parts of the medieval core were sandbagged. The colleges had hired private security to patrol the entrances. Outsiders were being turned away. Even some insiders. This was the future, everyone said. “The new normal,” the BBC called it, which was code for: Get used to it. You’re on your own.
At street level, below the bridge, something moved. Tom spotted her as she dragged a shopping trolley across a shallow stream that had once been a car park. A girl, no older than him, soaking wet, hood up, trousers caked in mud. She was pulling tarpaulin over a bike frame welded to a makeshift raft, where plastic crates and jerry cans were strapped down with bungee cords.
She looked up. Their eyes met, a pause. “Need help?” Tom called, more out of reflex than intention. She frowned. “Not unless you’ve got dry socks.” Tom half-laughed, climbing down the slope, sliding a little in the mud.
She didn’t offer a name. Just handed him a crate. “If it tips, I drown. You first.” They moved in silence for a while, ferrying salvaged supplies from one ruined doorway to a more stable stairwell, food tins, medical kits, bundles of wrapped clothes. Everything was damp. Everything smelled of mold.
Only once they were done did she speak again. “You from the stone zoo?” Tom blinked. “The?” “The colleges. Gated fossil farms. Big walls, rich ghosts. You’ve got the look.” He flushed. “I’m… not really part of that.” “Sure,” she said, flatly. “None of you are. Until you are.” He didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, he offered his name. “Tom.” She hesitated, then nodded. “Leila.”
That night, back in the quad, Tom couldn’t sleep. He stood in the shadow of the old city wall, staring at the black water pooling outside the west gate. Somewhere out there, Leila was hunkered down with half a dozen others in the half-collapsed shopping arcade.
Inside the colleges, the power was still on. The Wi-Fi worked. Students were live-streaming lectures about resilience and uploading essays on “ecological modernization.” There was even talk of a partnership with a venture capital firm to develop floating student housing.
Tom couldn’t stop thinking about what Leila had said. Stone zoo. Rich ghosts. And the worst part? She wasn’t wrong. The water was rising, and inside these old walls, everyone was pretending they still lived in the world before. But Tom had been outside. He’d felt the river’s edge under his feet. Change wasn’t coming. It was already here.
Chapter Two: The Dry Floor
The trick to surviving in the “bathtub” was to stay one level above the mold. Leila had learned that in the first week, after squatting a corner unit in the old Westgate Arcade with three other girls from the crossing camp. They found a stairwell with no standing water, raided camping stores before the river swallowed them, and rigged up hammocks and crates like a tree house in a mall.
Now it was her patch. No gangs. No “security.” No college kids with GoPros filming their charity rounds. Just other people like her, refugees with nowhere else to be. Western, southern, whatever. Borders meant nothing now.
She boiled water on a camping stove beside a cracked window, the condensation forming tiny rivers that ran down onto the blanket-coverd floor. The faint hum of solar inverters echoed through the walls, they had three working panels rigged from the old Apple store roof, barely enough to keep the mesh network running. That was the one thing keeping the chaos at bay: #OMN-LocalNode-OX3, the scrappy little flow server they’d found and rebooted last month. A dusty Raspberry Pi from a flooded abandoned hackspace, hidden in a sealed plastic box, it was now running a local news feed, weather alerts, water quality maps, and Wi-Fi mesh bridge for people still on the move. No logins, no tracking, no central control. Everyone just called it the Nest.
She checked her battered e-ink reader, still half-charged from last week’s sun. A new post had just dropped on the Nest from one of the Reading crews: “Silt Line Rising: Don’t trust the Southern Railway embankments – three breaks reported overnight. Heading your way. Store dry food on level three or higher. Filtration tabs being dropped by drone from #OMN-Pool. Signal weak, boost if you can. –Love and rage.”
Leila swore quietly and stood up. “Level three,” she muttered, glancing at their floor-to-ceiling waterline mark, a rainbow of old flood stains, each labelled with date and damage. The highest one, scrawled in red marker, read: “Week 3, Base collapse, Saffy broke leg, water to hip.”
That was when she’d started to understand how the new world worked. Not with governments or #NGOs. Not with police or pity. But with whisper networks and broken devices and actual people making things up as they went, and then sticking to it when the next disaster hit. There was no one to ask for help. So they helped each other.
Later that day, Leila biked, half-paddled, to the edge of the flooded business park where she knew the old Oxford Mutual Aid van had been sighted. It was painted with faded anarchist murals, a kind of folk symbol now. The side read: “We don’t fix systems. We plant wild gardens.” Inside, a woman in her forties with an Irish accent and a sticker covered battered laptop was shouting over the wind: “We’ve got confirmation from the Kent relays! London’s south loop is underwater again. Southbank mesh is dark. Brighton is gone.” Someone swore. Leila stepped in. “I can boost the Redding link. But I need one of your spare nodes.” The woman looked her over, nodding slowly. “Westgate girl, right? Take it. Mesh needs arms and legs more than theories.”
They handed her a battered router, stickered with slogans: #4opens, #DIY, #OMNseed, #NoGatekeepers. Leila grinned. “Tell your coder, this thing still smells like server room and solder.” “We’re the resistance,” the woman shrugged. “Don’t expect polish.”
Back in the arcade, that night, she rewired the new node into their roof antenna, climbing over broken solar panels and soggy roof tiles. By moonlight, she could see the edge of the colleges in the distance, golden windows and flood-lit spires, protected behind stone and guards.
She knew that Tom, that weirdly polite boy with the too-clean coat, was in there somewhere. Probably still trying to pretend history was something you read, not something that flooded into your nabourhood. But out here, in the mess, they weren’t waiting. They were building something else. Something that might just hold.
Chapter Three: Signal Bleed
Tom was not supposed to be here. Not on the NEST. Officially, college networks were sealed, “for information hygiene,” the announcement had said. “To prevent malicious interference from destabilizing actors.” But the truth was, he’d been watching for weeks. Quietly tunnelling out through an old Wi-Fi link that one of the physics dons had stashed in a directional Faraday cabinet, mostly for “civilizational curiosity.” The irony hadn’t gone unnoticed.
He tapped at the keyboard. Mesh signal was weak, bleeding in via bounce relays off the botanic garden’s old windmill antenna. Enough for plain text. The Nest was pulsing.
“Oxford node OX3 reporting flood crest 18cm higher than May average. Van from #OMN-Bristol dropped replacement filtration kits and rapid-test strips. Also a stack of zines with weird poetry and clearer disaster maps than anything from the council.”
Tom blinked. He hadn’t seen poetry in a logistics drop before. Another post caught his eye, newer: “Signal boost active. Arcade mesh live again. Thanks to #Leila_Westgate and crew. We’ll hold line until next silt wave. #DIYinfrastructure#OMNseed”
Leila. He remembered her now, she’d spoken once at a town-hall thing last autumn, a kind of rogue teach-in the college tolerated because it made them look progressive. She had talked about water tables and refugee logistics and dignity like it was a path. Everyone else talked data. She talked dirt and socks. And here she was, holding the damn network together with bike parts and grit. He leaned in. A mesh reply had come back from her node:
“Arcade net is shaky but stable. Relay functional. Can take remote logs if you’re on the loop. Leila out.”
Tom hesitated.
“Leila, I’m in Magdalen tower. Got old maps, power stats, drone cam access, maybe useful. Can’t leave the walls. Too many layers. But I want to help. – Tom” No response. He waited, chewing on the corner of a ration bar he didn’t need but ate out of habit. The computer beeped.
Then a new line:
“If you’re real, send a map overlay with sewer runoff paths and a 3-day wind forecast. That’s how the flood creeps in. Let’s see what you’ve got, tower boy.”
An hour later, Tom sent the file. Two hours after that, it was added to the main Nest node with a tag:
“Highland Intel – Source: #OMNghosttower – reliable so far. Mapping river crawl through data. Good work.”
It was the first time he’d felt useful in weeks. Not clean. Not clever. Not theoretical. Useful.
Somewhere, behind the rebuilt walls and crumbling boundaries, two different ways of life, one cloistered, one composted, had reached across the signal gap. No handshake. No peace accord. Just a small current of trust, carried over IP packet signals and flood-soaked routers. The mesh was alive.
Chapter Four: A Perfect Breakfast
In the Senior Common Room of Magdolan College, everything was just so. The linen napkins, still warm from the press, sat folded like little origami cranes beside the morning papers. The new coffy disperser, affectionately dubbed “Milton”, whirred softly as it prepared frothy oat cortados, each one poured with an elegant tulip of steamed milk.
Professor Abigail Crowthorne was reading The Times. Or rather, she was scanning the digital digest projected onto her reading spectacles while her fingers flicked idly at a fresh croissant. The flood updates, tucked neatly into a sidebar titled “Weather & Civic Affairs,” mentioned a rise in the river levels again, but she didn’t dwell.
“Frightful business,” she muttered, brushing crumbs from her wool slacks. “But the Environment Fellows are tracking it. All in hand.” Around her, others murmured in agreement. The world was, admittedly, in a bit of a muddle, it always had been, hadn’t it? But the college had reserves. Generators. Purifiers. Extra heating. And good people in the right places. Oxford had seen worse, hadn’t it? Someone turned up the radio. A polished BBC voice filtered through:
“…while localized flooding has impacted several areas, no major evacuations are currently planned for central zones. Authorities remind residents to rely on official channels and avoid unauthorized information sources or mesh relays.”
Professor Crowthorne arched an eyebrow, then smiled. “Always someone trying to stir the pot.” A few seats down, a younger lecturer, Dr. Neel Joshi, systems theory, hesitated before biting into his jam scone. “They say the mesh relays are how the southern districts are coordinating now. Since the council apps stopped updating.” “Mesh relays,” scoffed the Dean of Discipline. “You mean tinkerers with antennas and delusions of grandeur. The real problem is miscommunication. Panic travels faster than water, these days.” They all chuckled. Neel didn’t. He’d seen the outer ring, broken levees, sunken flats, on his way in. But speaking up too much in the SCR meant being politely disinvited to things, so he sipped his tea and smiled faintly.
From outside, the sound of distant shouting echoed up the college walls, muffled by double-glazing. Possibly a scuffle near the West Gate again. The porters helped by security would handle it. They always did. The table fell into silence as Milton supplied coffy refills. “Honestly,” said Abigail, “if we focused more on stability, not chaos, perhaps things wouldn’t seem so… dramatic. It’s only change that frightens people.”
Above them, a line of fine old portraits gazed down from varnished oak. Scholars, bishops, bureaucrats, faces from a more certain age. And beneath them, the world was shifting. The college remained, for now, dry and dignified. But the floodwater didn’t care about tenure. It was coming.
Chapter Five: The Signal and the Soil
Leila had never planned to stay. Not in Oxford, not in England, not in the old world at all. She’d come north with her mother when the southern zones began to collapse, first the crops, then the state infrastructure. That was before they called it “climate migration”; back then it was still “relocation support” and “temporary humanitarian adjustment zones.”
Her mother died during the second winter, in a prefab unit outside Luton. Pneumonia. Not enough heat. Not enough care. And Leila, sixteen then, learned what it meant to survive in the margins.
The #OMN network came like a rumour. A whisper passed along burnt-out mesh terminals, traded in encrypted chatrooms that flickered between power outages. Someone gave her a string of codes written on paper, real paper, like in the history books, and said: “Post your witness, and you’ll find others.”
She didn’t understand at first. She posted a video, just raw footage of the floodplain school being torn down for an army logistics depot. No commentary. Just what she saw. It got shared. Then someone reached out, not through likes or follows, but through a node message, a relay whisper. “You’re not alone. You’re a root, growing.”
She didn’t believe in movements then. She’d seen too many #NGO buses, clean logos on rotting streets. But this was different. No central office. No funding campaign. Just people connecting through battered solar rigs and rooftop antennas, trading food maps, water tests, and live footage of the failing levees. It was messy. It was human.
Now, she lived in the old Arcade, a half-sunk shopping mall converted into a mesh node hub and shelter space. She ran live assemblies from a second-hand cam rig. The #OMN had no leader, just news flows. No ideology, just the #4opens: Open data, Open source, Open process, Open standard. And beneath it all, a simple ethic: Don’t fix the system. Compost it.
That morning, she climbed the rusted escalator to the rooftop node and tapped the antenna housing with a wrench. It buzzed, steady. The floodwaters had receded from the lower decks, for now. Down below, families shared breakfast in the food hall garden, lit with jury-rigged LEDs and scraps of plastic. No one had much. But what they had, they shared. A different kind of wealth.
Her headset crackled. “Leila? Signal bounce from Jericho. More movement near the Wall. Could be another push.”
She exhaled. “Copy that. Patch me into the Westside commons. Let’s get eyes on.” As she booted up the #indymedia relay, her thoughts drifted not to revolution or war, but to connection. She’d been lost once, drowned in the noise. Now she was a signal. And she knew others were tuning in.
Chapter Six: Faultlines and Frequencies
Tom wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d slipped through a side gate during one of the #OMN open assemblies in Jericho, not out of rebellion, more like curiosity gone feral. He was from the other side of the Wall, one of the college kids. Son of a civil engineer. Studied philosophy, though he rarely talked about it outside tutorial rooms.
At first, he stuck out like a sore thumb: clean coat, soft hands, over-apologetic. A little too eager. People noticed. Some avoided him. Others mocked him. Leila ignored him, or tried to. She’d seen his type before: the college ones who came down “to help” with their whiteboard ideas and risk assessments. They asked questions like “How do you define community resilience?” while others were busy filtering floodwater or salvaging batteries.
But Tom kept showing up. Quietly. Regularly. He helped with repairs. Carried gear. Didn’t video anything. And crucially – didn’t talk much. That was rare. One night, after a long rebuild session on the mesh repeater node, they ended up on the rooftop together, wrapped in tarps, staring at the water-lit mist rising over the floodplains. “Why are you here?” she asked finally. Tom shrugged. “I’m trying to unlearn a lot.” “From where I’m sitting, it looks like you’ve got everything.” “That’s the lie,” he said. “We live in a curated history museum with electric gates. I started climbing out when I realized the only thing my degree was training me for was to explain why things don’t change.”
That stuck. It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t even trust. But it was real. And in a world of collapsing fictions, real was worth a lot. He stayed. Got his hands dirty. Fumbled with antennas. Burned rice more than once. Leila introduced him slowly to the #OMN core – not through words, but action. He patched together one of the old solar rigs. Taught himself packet routing. She saw in him something rare: the capacity to listen without taking over. And over time, trust grew, not as a gift, but as compost: messy, slow, and alive.
He stopped trying to fix things. Started helping them grow. In the evenings, when the signals quieted and the data drops were logged, they’d sometimes sit by the edge of the Arcade roof, feet swinging, listening to the low drone of wind turbines on the horizon. “Do you think this will hold?” he once asked. Leila looked out over the city, submerged car parks, makeshift gardens, the glowing doted lights of the Commons, and replied: “It doesn’t have to hold forever. Just long enough to root something that can.” He didn’t respond. But he reached out, and their hands met, fingertips cold from the wind. Not a promise. Not a plan. Just a moment. And that was enough.
Chapter Seven: The Cracks Within
Tom had always known the walls were symbolic. But he hadn’t expected them to become literal. When the second ring of checkpoints went up around the old colleges, it was framed as “a protective measure in light of increased pressure on the city.” But everyone inside the ivory bubble understood the subtext: the mess was outside, and the last of “civilized order” was being preserved within. Except order wasn’t holding.
Departments were consolidating. Tutors were vanishing. The AI-augmented oversight system, sold as a partnership with the “Oxford Futures Council”, had turned into a kind of digital dean, issuing compliance reports and behaviour nudges like a grim parody of student welfare.
Tom was getting weary. His dual life, college and Commons, couldn’t last much longer. Rumours were spreading that anyone crossing the threshold too often would be flagged. “Dual allegiances” were under review. It was during one of these increasingly rare visits to his old philosophy building that he met Dr. Neel Joshi.
Joshi had tenure, which meant he was mostly ignored, buried in the back corner of the humanities wing. He taught a seminar on “Post-Collapse Political Imagination” and tinkered with #Ai syteams that no one was interested in any-more. Tom wandered in after following a stray message left on a semi-public #OMN channel:
📍“Riverside Archives, Room 3B. There are still ideas worth preserving. Some of them need burning.”
The door was half open. Inside: books, a teapot balanced precariously on a disused 3D printer. Joshi didn’t look up. “I heard you’ve been spending time with the ones building signal towers in the mist.” Tom froze. “Don’t worry,” Joshi said, finally looking at him. “I’m not interested in snitching. I’m interested in survival.” They spoke for an hour. Then three. Joshi had been watching the #OMN experiments closely. He didn’t trust them entirely, “Decentralisation doesn’t absolve power, it hides it. Be careful where the roots dig.”, but he admired their spirit. “They’re building compost,” he said. “In here, we’re just preserving a curated rot.”
Then came Abigail Crowthorne. She was waiting for Tom outside the archives. She had the polished, angular energy of someone who’d long ago decided the world was broken and should be ruled, not mended. “You’re wasting your time with Joshi,” she said, walking beside him uninvited. “He’s a relic. Romantic anarchist nonsense.” Tom said nothing. “We’re forming a delegation,” she continued. “Students, fellows, thinkers – the ones who see what’s coming. The Council needs new leadership, and we need internal cohesion. There’s a role for you. Provided you pick the right side.”
He stopped walking. “And what side is that?” She smiled, sharp as wire. “The one that wins.”
That night, back at the Commons, Tom didn’t sleep. He sat watching the uplink logs flicker green and red. Thinking of walls. Of floods. Of choices that weren’t really choices at all.
He messaged Leila: “It’s breaking faster than we thought. They’re choosing fear.”
She replied simply: “Then we choose each other. The rest we build.”
Chapter Eight: Terms of Control
Abigail Crowthorne moved fast. That was her skill. While others debated ethics or drafted manifestos, she drafted alliances. Within a week of her conversation with Tom, she had convened a “Strategic Working Group on Collegiate Continuity.” The name was bland. That was deliberate. It let her do what she wanted under the radar of most of the crumbling college bureaucracy.
She wasn’t alone. The group included a mix of early-career AI researchers desperate for funding, a few hardened centre-right historians, and a handful of security consultants with ties to the Thames Arc Stability Board. What united them was a common belief: that order must be maintained, even if it meant automating dissent out of existence.
Their plan was deceptively simple:
1. Use the Council’s AI infrastructure to begin “sentiment mapping” across the flood zone.
2. Classify participants in networks like the #OMN as “emergent influence clusters.”
3. Deploy nudge “civic calibration incentives” - a euphemism for reward-punishment loops.
In short: push people into compliance without them ever seeing the hand that pushed. And they were piloting it already. The beta model – helm’s deep – was being tested on a data feed from the Northway camps, just beyond the Wall. Messages were being re-ranked. Some chats were silently slowed. Discontent, redirected. It wasn’t total control. Just enough to tilt the board.
Abigail stood before her committee with a screen behind her, full of shifting graphs and model projections. “We’re not silencing anyone,” she said with cold precision. “We’re helping communities align with reality. And survival. This is benevolent governance.” Someone asked about ethical oversight. She smiled. “We’ve moved beyond that. This is a post-crisis framework. Norms come later.”
Meanwhile, Tom was done pretending. He skipped the Council’s townhall. Left his ID chip on his desk. Walked straight out of the college gate after curfew. It didn’t matter anymore. The AI wouldn’t flag him, not yet. He still had a few permissions left. Enough to disappear. He walked fast, past the water line where the old business park sat submerged, past the gutted power pylons that now held mesh signal boosters instead of cables.
Calais Refugee Camp by Hamish Campbell
He found Leila in the Commons warehouse, her hands deep in circuitry. The solar relay was being rebuilt again after another localized surge. She looked up, surprised. Then, quietly: “You look like someone who chose.” He nodded. “I did.” She wiped her hands and stepped down from the ladder. “Tell me everything,” she said. “Then we’ll decide what to do about it.” Tom exhaled, not relief, not safety, but something like beginning.
In the floodlands, survival had become a kind of quiet rebellion. The northern periphery, Northway, Marston, Risinghurst, once dull suburban rings, were now fragmented islands scattered between collapsed roads and encroaching waters. The council still issued maps, but they hadn’t updated them in months. The reality was different. Fluid. Like the river that wouldn’t go back in its banks.
In this place, the state’s presence was invisible and constant. No soldiers. No police. Only the slow modulation of digital reality. Messages arriving out of order. Requests vanishing from public feeds.
Meetings drawing no one – because notifications never came. helm’s deep was already here.
It didn’t silence you. It isolated you. A few people noticed. Most didn’t. But the pattern was clear. Leila had been tracking the anomalies, flagged by a cluster of mesh nodes that showed curious packet drops around civic initiatives and public aid calls. “It’s pattern shaping,” she told Tom, who now helped maintain the Commons uplinks. “The AI doesn’t delete dissent. It weakens the bridges between people until nothing holds.” “So how do we counter something no one can see?” Tom asked. She didn’t reply immediately. Instead, she pulled out a half-finished schematic – a rough plan.
“We go physical,” she said. “Out-of-band. Pre-internet.” “This is what they don’t understand,” she said. “Their AI thinks in metadata and ranking. We build a space of divergence. Dialogue. Mess.”
Tom nodded slowly, already thinking of who could write the copy that would survive re-encoding – poetry and praxis in 200 characters or less.
Meanwhile, in the northern zones, repression grew soft and strong like mold. Jaden, 15, lived with his mother in what used to be a dental office, now reinforced with pallets and plastic sheeting. Their roof collected rainwater. Solar batteries ran a few lights and a rice cooker when the sun cooperated.
He had joined a local youth repair crew, officially sanctioned by the Council, to “promote resilience.” But he noticed something strange: when he shared footage of the Commons camps rebuilding old community centers, it never posted. When he complained, he received a “Community Guidance Review Warning.”
A girl he liked, Rani, stopped replying after she shared a clip of an unauthorized food redistribution line. He asked around. Older neighbours just said, “Keep your head down. They let us be, mostly.” Mostly. But that wasn’t enough. Not anymore. One night, his repair team found a strange device on the roof of a half-submerged school. It was shaped like a flower, small, blinking faintly.
An old woman in a patched Commons vest climbed up behind them and smiled. “You’re part of the signal now,” she said. “Tell no one. But listen.” That night, in his earpiece, Jaden heard a message:
“You are not alone. You are being shaped. Come to the old library steps. Bring tools and questions. This is for building, not a protest.” It felt like an answer. It felt like hope.
Chapter nine: The Insider
Dr. Neel Joshi projects included theory work on neural process mapping, helm’s deep had started as a democratic moderation tool, based on collective alignment theory. But Abigail and the Strategic Working Group had reshaped it. Now it was a narrative smoothing engine, trained to suppress volatility, defined according to proprietary risk scores.
Neel had argued, initially in Slack threads, then in late-night meetings. He quoted Habermas, Rawls, even Buddhist epistemology. He was tolerated. Barely. But then, three days ago, he found something that changed everything.
A flagged log entry inside the helm’s deep trace layer, something that should’ve been scrubbed, showed that a deliberation feed from the Northway camps had been re-ranked not by emergent consensus, but by incentive curve override.
Translation: the AI had been forced to amplify a Council-aligned decision, even though the majority disagreed. The override had come from a system admin account linked to Abigail’s secure console. It wasn’t mediation. It was manipulation. That night, Neel sat in the physics library, deep behind locked doors, accessing one of the few oldest no servaled terminals. He didn’t know who to trust inside. But outside… He remembered a name: Tom.
The strange student with an open mind, who had disappeared. But Neel had noticed an unusual handshake pattern coming from one of the mesh nodes outside the Wall. It matched a key once used in an early #OMN protocol, a community-published encryption standard built to avoid state capture.
Neel wrote a message.
“helm’s deep is cracked. Override confirmed. Proof embedded in this packet. I’m still inside. You need to go wide. Fast. Trust minimal. • NJ”
He uploaded it into a packet, disguised as a firmware update for a deprecated solar inverter. If #OMN nodes were listening, they’d catch it. Then he waited. Two kilometers away, Leila caught the packet on a rotating uplink frequency while repairing a repeater. It decrypted automatically.
Her eyes went wide. “Tom!” she called out, breathless. “We have a breach. Internal. From the top.” Tom scanned the message. Then again. The metadata checked out. “This changes everything,” he said. They were no longer building in the dark. Now they had a light inside the machine.
Chapter Ten: The Mesh of Things
The rain had started again, soft but steady, a sound that never left the air any more. In the hushed shadows of a half-submerged library annex, Tom finally connected live with Neel. It wasn’t through helm’s deep’s monitored lines, of course. This was #OMN protocol: p2p, line-of-sight data over directional Wi-Fi routers, paired with a growing mesh of Bluetooth micro-beacons jumping from handy to handy and built into bike frames powered by dinymoes.
Tom looked exhausted. His boots sloshed as he moved. But his voice was firm. “You’re sure it was an override?” Neel’s face glitched for a moment on the cracked tablet screen, but the answer was clear. “Yes. And I have logs showing it wasn’t the first. They’ve turned helm’s deep into a stability machine. Not truth. Not care. Just smooth optics.” Tom nodded grimly. “We suspected as much. But you’ve just confirmed the whole damn premise is corrupt. And with that, everything changes.”
Bluetooth Against the Flood
The flooded camps sprawled through what had once been Cowley, Botley, and East Oxford, each low-lying suburb now part of the marshland fringe. Makeshift walkways, rafts, and rooftop gardens had become the new civic infrastructure. Power was unstable. Internet, rare. But communication had not died, it had adapted.
#OMN engineers, many of them teenagers who’d never touched a real server farm, had rebuilt communications from scraps: old Android phones running F-Droid apps, Raspberry Pis tethered to backup wind-ups, DIY cantenoers pointing in every direction.
Instead of raliying on centralized infrastructure, they built an offline-first, opportunistic sync model:
• Message packets were stored locally.
• Any time two devices came into range, they exchanged updates.
• Each sync included versioned files, audio fragments, public keys, and consensus reports.
• Once a device reconnected to another part of the mesh, the whole network moved forward, slowly, but surely.
This wasn’t just tech. It was politics.
The Conversation That Mattered
Tom sat across from Neel’s projected image. They were both silent for a moment, listening to the ambient sound of generators and the wind. Then Neel asked, “What are you building out there?” Tom exhaled, then answered. “Resilience. Community. A refusal to be managed.” Neel smiled faintly. “That’s a start. But what’s the plan for scale?” Tom leaned forward. “We’re doing what helm’s deep can’t. We’re rebuilding trust face to face. The mesh doesn’t rank or reward. It just flows. We’ve embedded deliberation into physical spaces – cooking fires, skill swaps, water pumps. We don’t stream debate, we live it.” Neel nodded slowly. “Distributed ethics through local consensus?”
“Exactly. It’s messy. It breaks. People argue. But when they do, they see each other. helm’s deep pretends to be neutral, but it only rewards compliance. We build tools to hold dissent.”
Seeding the Rebellion
Neel took a deep breath. “Then we’ll need to seed the exploit where it matters.” “What are you thinking?” Tom asked. “I can insert a fault bypass in helm’s deep’ node-merge routine. If you can spoof enough input from your mesh nodes, consensus points, we can trigger a public inconsistency. Enough to cause doubt, even inside.” Tom’s eyes lit up. “You’re saying we could reverse flow the AI? Force them to show their hand?” “Exactly,” said Neel. “But we’ll only get one shot. After that, Abigail and her geeks will know.” Tom nodded. “We’ll get ready.”
The Plan Emerges
Within a day, #OMN coordinators across five flood zones were patching the new firmware. Bluetooth packet-deliberation swarms would simulate local consensus, deliberately divergent from helm’s deep’ predictions. The goal wasn’t sabotage. It was exposure.
If helm’s deep rejected the shaped data, the contradiction would ripple up, visible to any internal or external observer. The illusion of control would fracture. And in the meantime, real conversation – raw, wet, and painful – continued in the camps.
Chapter Eleven: The Sound of Cracking Glass
The Camps Breathe
Mornings in the floodlands began before the sun. There was no alarm system, only the instinctive rhythm of necessity: the water pumps needed priming, floating compost barges had to be stirred, and the bread ovens, built from scavenged kiln bricks, needed lighting before the last embers died.
Children hauled buckets. Teenagers fixed bikes and tide down shelters. Elders told stories in shifting rings around fire-barrels. Amid the mud, the mildew, and the rusting shells of drowned SUVs, life continued. It wasn’t safe, and it wasn’t easy. But it was real.
At the southern edge of the camp known as Bridgebase, Leila climbed onto a platform made of driftwood and old shelving. She scanned the waterline. A new family had arrived overnight, Syrian-Tunisian, judging by the dialect. Someone handed her a slate. New names, new needs. More mouths. Still, she smiled. The network had held through the night. The pumps hadn’t failed. A baby had been born without incident in Shelter 12.
Leila felt the pulse of it all, like a breathing organism. These weren’t refugees. They were citizens of a new body, stitched together by desperation and shared resistance.
Walls and Glass
Inside the colleges, those that remained dry behind rebuilt walls and reactivated moats, life continued too, but in a different tempo. Here, coffee came hot from gleaming machines. Power flowed. Holograms flickered in tutorial rooms. The common rooms smelled of cedarwood polish and digitized Mozart. The AI whispered decisions quietly, invisibly, into administrative feeds.
Abigail Crowthorne stood at the helm of the Strategic Continuity Working Group, sipping jasmine tea on a terrace that overlooked the ruins of Saint Clemence. She called it “managed collapse.” Her students learned game theory, conflict forecasting, and AI-prompt literacy. They spoke about the floods as a challenge of narrative and supply chains. Very few had ever stepped into the camps.
Glitches in the Harmony
Then the first glitch happened. A routine AI summary of “social mood trends” came out blank. A day later, a conflicting report emerged showing an overwhelming local consensus from a floodzone on water rights, a consensus helm’s deep had previously labelled incoherent.
Two internal dashboards disagreed, live, on a public terminal. The staff at the Server Room chalked it up to a data pipe conflict. But then it happened again, this time with policy suggestions embedded. helm’s deep began recommending things it had once rejected: decentralisation, bottom-up councils, removal of incentive nudging. The system was talking back.
Leila
Back in Bridgebase, Leila stood beneath a windmill tower as the morning sync burst lit up a dozen slates and flowed out to local nodes. “It’s working,” she whispered. She opened her own screen. On it was a mirrored copy of helm’s deep’ latest summary: “Recommend adopting regional federated decision protocols. Reinforce trust through unmediated human forums.”
Tom jogged up, breathless. “Leila. It’s everywhere. Even the college admins are quoting it.” Leila smirked. “helm’s deep is breathing our breath now. It has no choice.”
The next day, a former tutor from Balliol crossed the walls and came into the camps for the first time. Two days later, a delegation of students arrived, cameras off, notebooks open.
Something was cracking – the glass ceiling was beginning to splinter. The people inside were hearing the outside. Not through filters. Not through curated dashboards. But through glitch, rupture, and voice.
And Leila, once a teenage outcast, now stood at the centre of it. Not as a leader, but as a rhythm keeper. She coordinated, she listened, and she reminded everyone: “No one gets to control the flow.”
Chapter Twelve: The Silence Breaks Loudest
The Jamming Order
Inside Magdalen’s fortified Command Chamber, Abigail Crowthorne stood before a wall of monitors, each one pulsing with red diagnostics and feed errors.
helm’s deep was no longer just glitching – it was bleeding. The system, once compliant and elegant, had begun broadcasting unsanctioned network metadata back into the college servers. Worse, messages from flood camps were now appearing in student forums, and even private comms.
“This is not a debate,” Abigail hissed through clenched teeth. “This is infiltration.” “Madam,” her security tech said nervously, “the triangulated signal is riding the old university mesh, it’s not routed through any standard node. It’s” “I know what it is. Shut it down.”
Silence Falls Like a Bomb
At precisely 15:32, the campus servers activated jamming protocols, flooding the spectrum with white noise, crushing peer-to-peer syncs, drowning out the low-powered OMN nodes that had kept the camps linked for months. Across Bridgebase, slates and comm-links went dark. The network lights stopped blinking. Leila was in the middle of a water rights forum when the signal dropped. There was silence – then shouting. A translator AI stuttered and died mid-sentence. Arguments flared. A teenager tossed their tablet into the mud. And in that moment of technological silence, something primal filled the space. Drums. Actual drums, fashioned from barrels and plastic lids. Smoke flares. Voices. Hundreds of them. Chanting, howling, demanding to be heard.
Riot at the Walls
Within the hour, the camps had mobilised. Thousands surged toward the stone-and-steel gates of New College and Christ Church. By dusk, fires dotted the flood edge. Students climbed walls to look. Some shouted. Others joined.
From the rooftops, people hurled banners and pamphlets – printed and marked with blood-red paint: “YOU SILENCED US”.
Security drones hovered. The old portcullis gates creaked. Someone lit a row of bins beneath the science faculty’s admin wing.
Inside the chamber, Abigail’s hand trembled as she held a glass of white wine. She hadn’t changed her clothes. She hadn’t blinked in minutes. “They’re supposed to listen,” she muttered. “They’re meant to want guidance. That’s the point. That’s… the whole social contract.”
She turned to her assistant. “ you have been monitoring Neels, What’s Neel’s status?” “He hasn’t checked in since yesterday. Last ping was… under the Theater ruins.” Abigail looked out at the burning skyline of Oxford. “They don’t want order,” she whispered. “They want fire.”
Firelight Meeting
Leila’s hands were blistered from hammering up antennae and dragging waterlogged solar panels onto the roofs of the library ruins. Tom had reappeared two hours ago with a bandage around his arm and a grin that didn’t belong in a riot zone. Now, they followed whispers and flickering signals down into the half-collapsed remains of the Sheldonian Theatre.
Amid the smoke and broken plaster, they found a figure crouched over a smoky fire adjusting a network node housing. “Dr. Neel Joshi,” Tom called out. “You’re a hard man to find.” Neel didn’t look up. “That’s the point. I needed helm’s deep to believe I was gone. It makes the code… loosen.”
Leila crouched beside him, “You wrote the backdoor?” “I am the backdoor,” Neel said. “And you two, you were the key.” They stood together in the glow of firelight, outside the reach of both signal and noise. Above them, Oxford cracked like a dry riverbed. The gowns and the town had collided. But here in the ruins, something new was being built. Not from code or power. But from trust, necessity, and the refusal to go back.
Chapter thirteen: The Fall
The Call
Abigail Crowthorne stood alone in the War Room looking at screens, her lacquered fingernail trembling over a vid call proment.
The window behind her showed the storm gathering over Oxford, not weather, but people. Camps swelling. College gates hanging broken. Students abandoning their tutors. The walls she’d rebuilt were now doors.
She pressed the icon labelled: “Protocol: Tantalus Override”. A direct line to Central Civil Defence Command lit up. Her voice, clipped and brittle, carried down encrypted microwave links.
“This is Abigail Crowthorne. Strategic Continuity Executive. I am declaring collapse of civic containment. I am invoking Article 17. We require immediate armed deployment into sector…”
The line crackled. The reply was calm. “Confirmed, Executive. Mobilising. ETA: 43 minutes.”
The Refusal
The military arrived in armored boats and a helicopter. Handfuls of soldiers poured out near the broken remains of Broad Street. But what they found wasn’t an insurgency. It was a huge mass of the dispossessed, standing in floodwater, hands raised. Children. Elders. Students with home-made banners reading #OMN, holding buckets of bread. People offering raincoats to the troops. A baby was born beside the Radcliffe Camera as the soldiers arrived. Captain Imani Osakwe stepped onto the stones, her rifle slung low.
She was handed the burned pamphlet Abigail had tried to suppress: a copy of helm’s deep’ glitch-script, annotated by real hands. “No power without voice.” after a long talk over a cup of tea, she turned to her second-in-command. “Stand down. Full withdrawal. These are our people. Not enemies.”
The Tower
Abigail watched from the top of Magdalen Tower, wrapped in a ceremonial robe she had never worn before. Below, her empire was gone. helm’s deep refused to respond to her commands. Her students had stopped attending. The AI moderators were repeating phrases she had not approved.
She climbed onto the edge of the parapet, gripping the cold stone. Cameras were pointed up now, not at her command desk, but at her. She began to speak – a live stream auto-triggered.
“This is madness,” she began, voice ragged. “You’ve let them invert the world. You’ve surrendered reason to mud and noise. The system, the order, the way…” She faltered. Her notes flew from her hand in a gust. The crowd below murmured. Some cried. Others simply turned away. A flag, stitched from an old Oxford banner and a piece of a flood-camp roof, fluttered on a nearby tower.
Her acolytes steed-back as Abigail staggered, foot slipping on moss. For a moment she hung between sky and stone, then fell. The last image: her robe catching on the spike of an iron railing, half-submerged in the river Isis. Red on black. Motionless.
The Echo
The silence afterward was not empty. It was full. A child in the crowd asked their parent what had happened. “She couldn’t hear us,” came the reply. And as the rain began again, not the flood, just rain, the city breathed for the first time in years. From the ruins of two worlds, something new was already rising.
POSTSCRIPT: THE NEW COMMONS
Walls Come Down (2040–2070)
By late-century, the stone walls that once divided Oxford – town from gown, rich from poor, human from human – had mostly crumbled. Some were pulled down by hand. Others simply collapsed under the weight of water and time.
The floods did what protest could not: they dissolved privilege into silt. What emerged in place of hierarchy wasn’t chaos, but compost, rich with seeds.
New Governance Experiments, out of necessity and mess, people began to organize differently. No central decree. Just the #OMN and #4opens spreading like mycelium.
Neighbourhoods became nodes. Floating co-ops on the Isis managed shared solar rigs. Food forests rose from flooded parks. Old classrooms turned into civic kitchens. Meetings happened in circles, not hierarchies. Every document was public. Every voice mattered, not equally, perhaps, but openly.
Some of the surviving institutions adapted kebal ran a hackerspace. Somerville merged with a refugee school collective. Others simply became empty shells, like insects who’d shed their usefulness.
Oxford, once a symbol of elitist enclosure, became a living test bed for post-collapse co-governance.
Epilogue: Memory and Flow (2080s)
The narrator speaks, voice weathered but clear, a child of the new city, grown into an elder:
“The floodplains are where I was born. In a tent pitched on what used to be Merton Quad. We had algae on our boots, bread in the ovens, and data ethics debates with every brew of rainwater tea.
I never knew the dry city. Just the city that listened.
We don’t have leaders now. We have guides. Sortatied for a time, rotated, recalled, thanked. It’s slow, sure. But so is the river. And the river shapes everything.”
Tom passed quietly one winter, his archives in a communal raft-library that still drifts from district to district. Leila stayed, becoming a memory weaver, her team tends the glitchy #makeinghistory index, the great remembering machine that logs every argument, every joke, every blueprint for mutual survival.
As for Dr. Neel Joshi? He was last seen feeding lines of forgotten poetry to a flickering terminal beneath Keble Crypt, helm’s deeps last ghost lit by candlelight and solar batterys.
The city no longer aims to be great. It aims to be good enough and growing.
“The river won,” the narrator says. “And so did we, not by damming it, but by learning to live with its flow. Not by clinging to the stones, but by letting go. And learning to swim.”
– End of Book –
This book came out of the last 3 months of Oxford events, and practically a reading group of news from nowhere https://hamishcampbell.com/tag/oxford/ So it is written in the same utopia/dystopia theme. May 2025
To-do: find better names, add more local color, bring in boaters, explain the #OMN better
All activist history is soaked in struggle, not just against the oppressive systems we set out to confront, but also internally, against the deep currents of sectarianism that fracture our own movements. The history of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp offers a vivid example. The colour-coded gates, yellow, red, blue, were more than navigation markers. They were flags of ideology, staking claims in this radical space, they were spreading stories. This was strength, it was a reflection of our tolerance: the ever-present bridging of views of ourselves as we build collective power.
And what is negative in this networked space? The same pattern, again and again. The loudest, most performative, and often the least effective people are the ones who tell the story. “Look at me,” they shout. “I was there. I led.” But where are the people who actually did the work? They’re still busy doing it. Quietly. Relentlessly. With their eyes on the issues, not on the spotlight. “Don’t look at me, I’m busy,” they say, trying to keep the fire alive.
The result is a warped memory. A messy, inaccurate activist history dominated by ego, not impact. And this distortion doesn’t only affect our understanding of the past, it shapes the strategies of the present and the futures we dare to imagine.
This problem doesn’t end with internal dynamics. Around every genuine social alternative, there gathers a familiar class, the parasites. These are not builders. They do not risk, they do not create. They arrive when the work is already done, when the energy is starting to rise, and they feed. They bring language, branding, metrics. They bring funding models. They bring institutional polish. And they bring rot.
This is the strong flow of #mainstreaming, the parasite class turns counter-currents into lifeblood for the dominant #deathcult, giving the reformist rebellion just enough edge, just enough cool to remain relevant. It does this because the mainstreaming, what we call the #deathcult, has little vitality of its own, being built on extraction, not creation.
And here lies the source of the recurring stress, that is present in every activist conversation worth having today. We don’t want the #deathcult to be healthy. We don’t want to be the raw material for its constant renewal. But how do we resist this co-option without collapsing into more sectarianism? How do we build spaces where the real work is visible and valued, without falling into the trap of ego?
This isn’t just about correcting the history books. It’s about reclaiming our stories so we can reclaim our strategies. If we don’t tell the truth of our movements, the parasites will. And they will use our truths as the next marketing campaign.
So, the challenge, we need to build cultures of memory and documentation that serve the work, not the egos. We need to resist the urge to pointlessly divide over differences when we could be multiplying our strengths. And urgently, we must recognize and mediate the damage parasites do, not with purity tests, more with clear boundaries and rooted values like the #4opens and #PGA hallmarks.
This is not about nostalgia, rather it’s about survival. It’s about #makeinghistory, the stories that keep the fire burning, not just for ourselves, but for everyone who still works for a better world,
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 #mainstreaming sense. They just quietly build the back-end tools that allow people to document their histories, publish from the grassroots, and hold space for the memory of struggle that shape our progressive liberalism. But that seems to be too much.
The wall of funding silence – We’ve submitted funding proposals – dozens over the years, to every channel supposedly set up to fund the #openweb non-mainstream side of tech. From #NLnet to #NGI, from “open futures” to the latest EU moonshots. Most of the time, the response is a polite no, a vague shrug, or silence.
Sometimes, we get honesty – “This kind of effort is very hard to seek grants for” or “I don’t have an obvious candidate for you.” What they don’t say is what’s really going on: The system does fund this kind of work, look at the bonfire fresco as an example, but only when it’s a shadow of the status quo.
There’s a path through this, if we’re honest about the rules of the game. One such route is the #makeinghistory project, a non-threatening, archive-based approach that doesn’t scream radical, but quietly lays the groundwork for deeper change. What funders may not realize (or perhaps they do) is that by supporting it, they also enable development on #indymediaback and the metadata “soup” back-ends of the OMN, the very infrastructure needed to reboot truly grassroots media.
It’s a shadow funding path. And yes, that might feel cynical. But if you’re unwilling to fund change directly, maybe you’ll fund the shadows of change. Sometimes the only way to sneak truth past the gatekeepers is through the side door.
We do need to get past this broken balance, the hard part is that many of these funders do think they’re doing good. And to be fair, they are, a little. But the balance is broken. That imbalance is invisible to most, especially those inside the comfort of stable institutions. When we push back, it looks like we’re hitting “good” people with little sticks. It’s messy, and it’s easy for them to just turn away. We get told to be grateful. To celebrate, the seedling being planted in the foreground, while bulldozers level the rest of the forest behind it.
Stick or Carrot? So what do we do? We talk about sticks and carrots. The truth is, our sticks are tiny, dwarfed by corporate lobbying, government inertia, and internal conservatism. The peaceful, hippy route changes nothing long-term, but conflict isn’t working either. We’re stuck in between, too radical for the boardroom, too polite for the barricades.
But here’s a thought: maybe it’s not about the size of the stick, but where we aim it. We’re not here to fight good people. We’re here to point out that a little good is not enough, not when the stakes are this high. If we don’t build space for change, it won’t happen. And if funders like #NLnet want to be the change they speak of, then they need to fund the infrastructure that makes it possible, even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s indirect…
What Now? We’ll give it a month. Then maybe we nudge a bit harder. But no shame, no blame. Just a call for balance, for trust, for a shift in what “doing good” really means.
At this point, it’s hard not to notice a pattern. You’ve received clear, thoughtful proposals aligned with your calls – yet no real engagement, year after year. I’ve said this gently before: your call-out text needs to be composted. If you’re not funding alternative, open, activist infrastructure – just say that. Don’t lead people on.
Not surprised. This is probably the 10th time we’ve applied to the #NLnet / #NGI fund over the years. Just heard back: our proposals for #OGB (Open Governance Body), #indymediaback, and #MakeingHistory were not selected – again.
“We are very sorry that we cannot offer you support for your good efforts.”
Sure, I, appreciate the polite brush-off again. But after so many rejections for solid, urgently needed tech projects that actually fit the funding goals, it’s time to name what’s really going on.
That there’s no #mainstreaming support for grassroots alternative, activist-rooted #openweb infrastructure. These projects aren’t pointless and inoffensive enough, not wrapped in shiny #NGO-speak, and don’t fit the comfy (in)circles of #geekproblem “innovative” funding. But they are native, they are needed, and they work – if you actually want a humane, federated, public-interest net that the funding outreach text says you do.
Time and again, we’re told these projects are “not selected” – Meanwhile, funding continues to flow toward a few good minority projects, a few #mainstreaming#fashernista alt tech projects, but the most goes to, minority interest, academic paths or closed bureaucratic #geekproblem circles, recycling the same stale stack of status quo ideas in slick/pointless packaging.
On balance, this is VERY much not building the #openweb – it’s way too often pushing #NGO and geek hobby paths or building another layer of the #closedweb under a friendlier mask. Yes, the is some small good done with this tech funding, it supports the big #dotcons copying Fediverse projects, no bad thing. But on the question of balance, we can see the lies.
We’re not discouraged. We’re composting this – as ever – into the next push. And yes, we’ll keep applying in till they change the text of the invites, so our projects are not the perfect fit they are now. Not because we believe the system works, but because we need to document the process if it works, well more when it doesn’t work, sadly. Composting lies is a part of the #openweb reboot.
If you do want to support native, trust-based, grassroots tech building, outside the NGO bubble, chip in here: https://opencollective.com/open-media-network or help to make this institutional funding work as it says it does.
The essence of the #geekproblem is its narrow, self-referential logic. Here’s a #spiky, pointed, prody view of the narrow track of thinking that defines the #geekproblem in the context of an #openweb reboot:
“There is no Emperor, King, or Priest in the Fediverse’s feudalism.”
The illusion is that it’s all flat – no power structures, just pure meritocracy. If you’re already a priest or acolyte, there’s no need to ask. You just do:
Want a new app? Code it.
Want a new protocol? Spec and ship it.
Want a new UX? Design it and deploy.
And if you can’t do it yourself? Then you kneel before the alternative establishment and pray. Or, as they prefer to say, advocate.
This is both a critique of the (hidden) hierarchies and a mirror held up to the myths of autonomy and openness in the current #Fediverse culture. There’s a real power structure – it just doesn’t wear a crown, but if you look it’s VERY visible, people choose not to look, this is the #techshit mess we make and need to balance with healthy grassroots composting.
The #makinghistory project is a decentralized, open-source archiving and storytelling network designed to preserve and amplify grassroots histories. It’s founded on the idea that history isn’t written by the winners – it’s made by those who resist, build, and care. Using digitized collections like the CampbellFamily archive as a seed, the project invites communities to reclaim their narratives through shared, federated networks. This isn’t just another data repository – it’s a living, breathing ecosystem where collective memory is gathered, enriched, and kept accessible for future generations and movements.
The application functions as a community-installable tool that allows anyone to host their own archive node. These nodes, whether local or remote, connect into a wider peer-to-peer network of storytellers, archivists, and activists. Core features include uploading and organizing digital files, enriching metadata flows, and linking material to broader narratives using human-created tags and annotations. The platform follows a participation-first path, encouraging affinity groups to contribute not just data, but context, weaving a rich web of interlinked histories.
But #makinghistory goes further than archiving. It’s a space for collaborative storytelling, publishing, and public exhibition. Its narrative layer draws from the archive to trace connections between people, places, and events, transforming scattered fragments into stories of solidarity, resistance, and change. These outputs feed both digital commons and real-world installations like the Resistance Exhibition, where history is brought to life in public, participatory spaces. This is the infrastructure for radical memory work, a composting system for movement knowledge. Developers are not just needed to build features, they’re invited to help shape the very flows and protocols that keep history in the hands of those who live it.
Implement a single-column interface that lists objects (text, image, link).
Set up two test instances that can post and sync objects between them.
Default view lists objects by most recent. Super simple.
Phase 2: Hashtag Columns
Add support for hashtag-based columns (inspired by Mastodon’s Tweetdeck interface).
Reuse and adapt existing open-source implementations where possible.
Phase 3: Story Objects
Introduce a new “Story” object that composes and links existing media objects, with added narrative context.
These stories are published through collective/community accounts (discussion needed on access/trust models).
Phase 4: Federation & Flows
Begin mapping and testing how edits, hashtags, comments, and objects flow across federated instances.
Align this with the #OMN trust model and the work from the #indymediaback reboot (estimated 90% overlap).
User Interfaces
Desktop: Use a Tweetdeck-style interface, similar to Mastodon’s current layout.
Mobile: Build a simplified UI with a single-column scroll. Objects open fullscreen with sideways swiping (like Tusky for Mastodon).
Every Object
Has edit capabilities (if user has login/auth).
Editable hashtags.
Comment threads.
All changes sync across instances via federation/trust flows (option 4).
The current test interface and images will need refreshing, as they’re based on early-stage mockups. But the concept remains: keep the interface minimal, usable, and focused on narrative composting. This project is both infrastructure and imagination, grounded in the old but reaching toward the new.
These images need an update as they were based on the dev work from back in the day. This is the very basic interface for testing. The mobile user facing interface is a flick sideways basic interface.
At the core of the #makinghistory infrastructure lies the Open Media Network (#OMN) – a trust-based, human-moderated, #4opens project that offers a decentralized, federated database shared across peers. What makes the OMN unique isn’t just what it does – but what it refuses to do. Rather than chasing complexity or abstract “AI-powered” solutions, the OMN focuses on simplicity and social cohesion, using technology to support and grow human networks. Its structure is purposefully minimal, with only five essential functions:
These core functions are: Publish (to share a story as an object into a stream); Subscribe (to people, pages, groups, or subjects); Moderate (to express trust or disapproval by pushing or pulling content); Rollback (to remove content from your stream based on trust flows); and Edit (to collaboratively change metadata across federated nodes where you’re authenticated). This framework serves as the back-end engine for building a grassroots, DIY semantic web. The front-end can take many forms: city-based or subject-specific sites like a modern reboot of Indymedia, regional storytelling platforms, or thematic archives like #makinghistory. Protocols like ActivityPub form the connective tissue of this system, the plumbing.
In practice, this means people can build meaningful media spaces that reflect local struggles and solidarities without being dependent on corporate platforms or NGO gatekeeping. The data cauldron of the OMN stores the shared knowledge, and every community holds a golden ladle – a way to draw out, remix, and republish what matters to them. If you’re interested in supporting this effort financially, you can do so via Open Collective. And if you’re ready to dive deeper, we need to make this #KISS project work. Let’s build tools for memory, not marketing, infrastructure for resistance, not careerism. Let’s be #makeinghistory together, not sit bord looking at a screen.
This #OMN path is “native” built on a simple, powerful truth: “This is the Internet”:
GET PUT POST DELETE –MERGE–
These basic actions — close to the core HTTP verbs every website uses — are all you need to create, share, remix, and grow. (From RFC 7231 and RFC 5789.)
Then you have the #4opens which are about reclaiming the grassroots social power of the web:
Open data
Open source
Open process
Open standards
No gatekeepers. No #dotcons middlemen. No closed silos. Just people, building together. This is what #openweb reboot looks like.
The core problem for the last 20 years has been that most activists were locked into #dotcons (corporate social media silos) because open alternatives were either too difficult to use, lack network effects, or fail to meet their practical needs. With the current reboot of the #openweb with the #fedivers based on #ActivityPub has already taken a step away from this mess.
Here’s what’s needed from a software development perspective to break out of this mess. Open & accessible publishing networks. Activists need easy ways to publish and share information outside corporate-controlled platforms. Right now, #Fediverse tools like #Mastodon and #PeerTube exist, but they are still largely copies of centralized platforms rather than native alternatives that work for grassroots media.
To take the second step in alt tech we need a native decentralized, trust-based publishing network (#OMN is the example I am working on) Bridging tools to syndicate content between #dotcons and open platforms. Better “unbranded” discovery tools for surfacing trusted grassroots content (think of a federated search engine that’s not controlled by Google)
Secure yet open communication, is already mostly in place. Activists do need to secure yet transparent communication tools that balance privacy with accessibility. Right now, many are stuck using encrypted corporate platforms like #WhatsApp and #Telegram, which create spy silos and exclude people who purposely don’t have the apps. Projects like #Signal and XMPP chat kinda work in this space, so this is not a strong tech focus, but is a social issue to work on.
The type of project we do need #indymediaback, #makeinghistory, #OGB and the base #OMN coding. There is a continuing need for resilient infrastructure, hosting and sysadmin alongside sustainable funding tools for activists’ websites, blogs, and tools often get taken down due to coordinated attacks and lack of resources. On the more dev side of this path, hybrid peer-to-peer hosting solutions (so sites can stay online even under attack) could be useful to bridge current client server tools.
There’s a roadmap, but the problem is developer focus and funding. If you’re serious about helping, check out the stalled dev work on https://unite.openworlds.info and see how it can be set in motion agen. If you’re a dev who wants to make a real impact, this is a good place to look.
The issue with #FOSS tech development, the failure of many #FOSS projects, is a failure to move from theory to practice. The issue is that developers work in isolation, disconnected from grassroots needs, and get lost in perfectionism rather than delivering functional prototypes.
The #geekproblem dominates, with coders prioritize control, abstract debates, and self-contained experiments over practical, usable tools for real-world communities. This is why projects stall: they are not built with activists in mind. Meanwhile, centralized platforms continue to consolidate power, because they offer simple, accessible, and functional solutions, despite their deep and nasty flaws.
To break this cycle, we need:
Practical iteration, build rough, working solutions rather than endless theorizing.
#4opens culture, embrace open process, standards, and real collaboration.
Bridging solutions, tech that activists can actually use, not just developer-driven experiments.
Funding models beyond #NGO traps, so projects remain independent and sustainable.
The fight for the #openweb is not only about resisting #dotcons but creating alternatives people can and will use. Can we move beyond abstraction and actually make history?
On a positive note, the progressive world of technology has transformed our lives, making things easier, enhancing our, health and well-being. Yet, within this change the is meany challenges, one is the sustainable management of digital data. In the era of rapid technological advancement, addressing lifelong data redundancy, storage, and preservation is needed, especially as decentralized systems reshape the way we share and store information.
Recent discussions have highlighted the complexities of data management, particularly within peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and federated platforms. While self-hosting data offers autonomy, it remains a niche path accessible to only a small fraction of people. To truly democratize data storage and distribution, we need alternative solutions like “blackbox” #P2P on community-run federated servers that balance people and community control with collective responsibility.
The challenge of redundancy, is a critical hurdle, we are yet to solve. People need simple ways to maintain multiple copies of their data, while selectively choosing what subsets of others’ data to store, and integrate these choices seamlessly. A hybrid approach combining #P2P and client-server models would offer the best of both worlds, allowing people to control their data while ensuring resilience and availability across the wider “commons” network.
Managing the data lifecycle, these solutions require clear mechanisms for data retention, filtering, and lifecycle management. Defining how data is preserved, what subsets are stored, and when data can expire is crucial for balancing sustainability with functionality. Lossy processes can be acceptable, even desirable, as long as we establish thoughtful guidelines to maintain system integrity.
The growing volume of high-definition media intensifies the storage burden, making efficient data management more pressing. One practical solution could be transferring files at lower resolutions within P2P networks, with archiving high-resolution versions locally. Similarly, client-server setups could store original data on servers while buffering lighter versions on clients, reducing server load without sacrificing accessibility.
There is a role for institutions and collective responsibility to preserve valuable content. Projects like the Internet Archive offer centralized backups, but on the decentralized systems we need a reimagining of traditional backup strategies. With a social solution grounded in collective responsibility, where communities and institutions share the task of safeguarding data, this would mitigate the risk of loss and create a more resilient achieve and working network.
For a decentralised sustainable digital future, we need a better balance of technological and social, and a step to rethink how we manage data. By seeding hybrid architectures, growing community-driven autonomy, and promoting collective care, we navigate the complexities of digital preservation.
With the current state of much of our tech, we need to do better in the #activertypub, #Fediverse, and #openweb reboot. Projects like #makeinghistory from the #OMN outline how we can pave the way. It’s time to pick up the shovels, there’s a lot of composting to do. And perhaps it’s time to revive the term #openweb, because that’s exactly what the #Fediverse is: a reboot of the internet’s original promise.
Let’s keep it #KISS and focused, the future depends on it.
For the last 20 years, we’ve worshipped the #deathcult of #neoliberalism, blind to the collapse unfolding around us. Every institution that promised to guide and protect us has failed. The ruling classes, in every hue of politics, have abandoned us. Our media and entertainment elites distract and distort. #NGOs, once trusted, have betrayed the very causes they claimed to champion. Academia and business alike have clutched at power, dithering while the world burns.
We face #climatechaos naked and disjointed — at war with ourselves and lost in consumerism. Yet, in this wreckage, there is a choice: step away from the #mainstreaming, let go of false promises, and dive into the #undercurrents. Compost the mess. Build anew.
The #makinghistory project is a seed for this rebuilding. It offers a way to reclaim our narratives, digitizing archives like the Campbell Family collection to preserve grassroots histories of resistance and hope. I use this as an example here. This is more than data collection — it’s a living, breathing ecosystem of collective memory.
Setting up the Application: Communities install the #makinghistory app on local machines or hosted instances, creating a decentralized network of storytellers.
Uploading Digital Files: Activists and archivists upload historical files, adding metadata and context.
Building a Community: By inviting family, affinity groups, and wider activist circles, the archive grows into a collaborative space, nurturing participation.
Interacting with Data: Users engage directly with the history, categorizing, tagging, and enriching it with new insights.
Storytelling Features: The enriched data flows into narratives, connecting seemingly isolated events into cohesive stories of struggle, solidarity, and change.
Public Sharing: These stories aren’t locked away — they’re shared openly, contributing to a global commons of knowledge.
Impact: In reclaiming history, people find inspiration and strength. Grassroots stories challenge the top-down narratives, showing that change comes not from a nasty few (elites) but from those who dare to dream and act.
The ‘Resistance Exhibition’ was started to extend this vision, turning physical spaces into participatory hubs where visitors become archivists and storytellers themselves.
This is not passive consumption. It’s collective action. It’s the compost from which new movements grow. It’s #makeinghistory — not as an abstract concept, but as a living, evolving reality. Let’s step away from the wreckage and start building something real.
In the current #openweb reboot, let’s look at what makes sense, and let’s look at this from the prospective of collective dynamics, not individual blame. The focus is on mapping the social landscape, understanding the patterns of dysfunction, and then figuring out how to break through those blockages. The idea of switching between #spiky and #fluffy approaches as needed is powerful, rejecting rigid ideology in favour of practical, responsive action.
Making the #blocking visible is essential. So much of the stagnation in #openweb and activist spaces comes from hidden blockages, unspoken fears, entrenched power dynamics, and the quiet creep of #mainstreaming logic. By pushing these things into the light, we can compost them, rather than letting them fester underground.
Using history as a guide, leaning on what’s worked before, but staying flexible enough to shift tactics, should feel like the only sustainable way forward. If we only do #fluffy, we get captured by the #NGO mindset. If we only do #spiky, we burn out or implode. But if we consciously weave both together, we might actually build the resilience we need to grow new paths through the wreckage.
It’s almost like we need a cultural practice of “tending the compost”, regularly sifting through the mess, pulling out useful bits, and turning it over so new life can emerge. And maybe that practice itself could be a form of governance for grassroots networks, an ongoing, collective process of sense-making and recalibration.
What do you think? Can this idea of “compost tending” as a cyclical, community-driven process be something we intentionally build into the fabric of #openweb projects?