Tag: OMN

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia

It’s now hard to get an easy view of the death of #indymedia as a lot of the most shitty behaver was taken offline as a part of the ripping that tore the project apart. For the #OMN this is a problem that we strongly need to mediate when implementing “individualistic” rights/workflows. We need to keep metadata flows intact to build trust and history. This challenge raises questions on the balance between privacy and transparency.

The were internal and external forces… I tend to concentrate on the internal as it’s the area that we actually have power/responsibility to make work. The external is a harder task that we then have to fight to challenge/change.

A good (non-neutral) write up of the #death of #indymedia https://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2011/04/478397.html

The start of the end for #indymedia with the project splitting into open/closed and the growing intolerances on both sides https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391384.html

How do movement die. Some #indymedia crew trying to unblock the ossification and growing open/closed conflict https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/02/391385.html

We need to not repeat this mess for the #indymediaback project.

What should #indymediaback look like?

For some of my views from living/working through this mess

http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2020/03/17/a-look-at-the-internal-mess-of-the-uk-indymedia-project/

http://hamishcampbell.com/index.php/2013/03/28/a-brief-history-of-activism/

The is a “good” seed of a different view in the #OMN project

We live in a “post truth” world where our everyday life is shaped by “cults” on one side you have the air we breathe #deathcult of neo-liberalism on the other you have blocking the bridges and languishing in jails the #lifecult of #XR both in their ways are “cults”.

I am struggling to articulate what a non “cult” world would look like – the 19th century view, while useful and powerful (in a dangurus way) has holes in it. the 20th century way of ecological suicide no matter how meany washing mashions we have, the 21st cemetery way is the #deathcult

Today am enacting the 19th century view, while building the 20th century view to fight the 21st cemetery view.

The is a “good” seed of a different view in the #OMN project that needs water and compost and lots of shovelling to move the current tech shit piles to the compost to grow the seed we water with our daily work.

You have a watering can?

All “standards” are social agreements/consensuses

Q. I am looking for the definition of open standards, and it’s quite foggy. I found on opensource.com something useful, but it’s still a candle in the dark

A. it’s an under resourced process for the #openweb that need input. It’s at the heart of the #OMN project. How we define it at the #OMN is a standard produced with process which is a bit circler as open “industrial” standards is one of the 🙂

#nothingnew is a guiding light in this project to mediate the #geekproblem #stupidindividualism and the #deathcult (understanding comes from fallowing flows to their source )

All “standards” are social agreements/consensuses thus they CANT BE built form #geekproblem #stupidindividualism and the #deathcult we have wasted and will waste more time if we keep pushing this shit.

The idea of the #OMN is that it does NOT host any/meany of projects it incubates rather it is the “holder” of the standards that glues the projects together. Some of these will be “standards body” some will be defacto by use and consensus. In the end we need to look beyond #nothingnew and create new standards body’s – go slow on this as concessions are hard and only worthwhile if you do the hard work to achieve them.

Shovel and compost comes to mind.

Over complexity is fixed by trust and #KISS

Q. Still trying to fix permissions issue for peertube ‎why is there always some piddly little issue (that will likely eventually have an easy fix)

A. Over complexity is fixed by trust and #KISS the problems we face now are complexity built on top of complexity. This is largely pushed by ‘security’ which is a direct result of the failure of ‘trust’. To mediate this we need to balance this, it’s the core process of the #OMN and were the social value grows.

Our instincts are #deathcult we build tools to serve “the is no such thing as society only individuals and their families” everything to do with social tech pushes this. These “piddling little issues” are the need for TOTAL control that comes from this world view. Thinking about it, it’s a theology as ideology tend to be.

Trust or fear is left/right or open/closed or life/death. Today everything is the second… tomorrow if we are to live we need to balance the first/second.

Thinking about #OMN from 4 years ago

I have found memories of fighting the Power Politics of the “undead left” during the London Social Forum many years ago – lots of knotted strings of organic garlic around the top “taking the power table” to highlight the uncomfortable “undead left´s” grasping for power.

Then the ad hock crew taking away the top table altogether during the lunch break and arranging all the chairs in a circle. Their faces were a delight, coming back after lunch and it kinda/might have worked… but the splits of “not thought of here” took over and the undead were permissioned to take back the space at the next meeting.

The ESF movement faded and now is a shadow – no alt was built.

The use of cultural myths and traditions will mediate and disempower “power politics” but it’s a chicken and an egg to get these embedded in groups that are already ensnared in “power politics”.

The rainbow gatherings used to work this way till they were “disrupted” by the digital shift and capture by the #dotcons now the gatherings themselves are broken due in part by being organized through #failbook

The #OMN could fail from the same issue. The myths and traditions are in place PGA and . But the project does not have deep roots to weather the inrush of success. And on the other hand will likely not last the slow growth needed for the roots to dig deep.

In activism when you have a shitty stinky process situation due to control freekery. You have two options:

  • Open
  • Closed

If its a open process project, the closing things down and hiding the crapness/mess will not help at all. The stink will leak out of every bit of the project from relations of core personals to the compromises involved in every piece of design/interaction during the project. This “low” misama might not to be immediately visible but it will cling to everything the project touches.

Open projects become dysfunctional when controlled by closed process, this is a feedback loop that this dysfunction is solved by more closed working/thinking till you are running a closed project.

If it’s a closed to start with then kick the people out – information can be controlled – power kept – and agendas pushed through till the funding runs out or people lose wider goodwill. Opening up a closed project without a revolutionary explosion is nearly impossible – all the repressed and hidden crapness that is needed to keep a closed project going will feed on itself when let loose.

Almost all NGO and activist groups are a mixture of open/closed.

The NGO´s falsify openness in consultations and meaningless focus groups. But always work closed at the core to continue funding and careers of the benefiting group – those who control the closed – not the community the NGO is setup to serve.

Activist by their nature tend to start out open then grow closed as they grow bigger – it’s a human scale thing. Interestingly affinity group organizing is trust based and another subject.

Hopefully we get an idea for the “dogma” of open and the clear rejection of “closed”.

Churning of pointless tech projects

Almost everything made in alt-radical tech is obviously pointless and only feeds #fahernista churn.
Why #indymediaback is not a pointless radical tech project.
#nothingnew mediates the churning of pointless tech projects by building things that already work.
In the #fedivers we use this tradition to replace existing #dotcons projects as new #openweb projects
This replicating the #dotcons with #openweb versions has its limits. All code is “ideology” so bringing in the #deathcult to the #openweb by direct copying has its own issues to work through.
We mediate this problem by recreating a widely used radical tech project #indymedia with good existing workflow and embedded in wide radical social networks/agreements.
The value balance in #indymediaback is not in the tech though that is needed. It’s in the #nothingnew social side of the project, without this continuity we have a pointless tech project.

Food for thought.

The #geekproblem is not actually interested in the #openweb as a human value network. Instead, they often feed off the current mess in different unhealthy ways. Feeding off the dying #openweb is bowing down to the #deathcult

Looked at it this way the need for change becomes more obvuse and active carrot and stick work important.

The #OMN is a shovel to compost this inhuman mess.

Rolling out the test #indymediaback projects

https://indymedia.hs2rebellion.earth

https://roadstonowhere.openworlds.info

https://indymedia.openworlds.info

We have a #activertypub codebase ready for testing, we have two campanes that asked for instances. We have stable hosting paid up for the next few years.

What we don’t have is any on the ground outreach/training/networking due the covide shutdown. We have limited tech dev needed to update the code from user feedback as a part of the roll out.

With this level of commitment we would be in danger of taking focus away from their current #dotcons outreach and taking up energy rather than helping with good outcomes for the campanes.

What do you think we should do next?

#indymediaback #OMN

The #OMN is built from the experience of 30 years of working at the coal face of grassroots media and tech.

Just about all tech and political projects are pointless “A river that needs crossing political and tech – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity”

A solution to this churning is “nothing new” as most of the issues we face have already been solved or at least mediated. #nothingnew and #4opens is a way of stepping away from the current tech mess. Politics is a bit more complex.

What is not pointless is an interesting challenge for tech and politics. To start this conversation you HAVE to use the to remove 99.9% of the #dotcons #NGO and #fashernista fluff.

The is NO conversation before you do this. When this is done you need to look at the #geekproblem which is both a curse and a delight.

The #OMN is built from the experience of 30 years of working at the coal face of grassroots media and tech.

What do you mean by “mainstreaming”

Q. what do you mean by “mainstreaming”.

A. we all worship the #deathcult (neo-liberalism) in polatics, economics, most of the food we eat, our jobs and social lives are all mediated/mostly created by this invisible world-view. In progressive terms #mainstreaming is pushing this agender to build carriears and social structures to further the personal #stupidindividualism created by the #deathcult we live in. This is a circle that is going to kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years from #climatechaos and the social feedback loop of political #fascism

#stupidindividualism is created by the social disintegration of the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, fascism is an outcome of this.

Examples from the UK groups @NovaraMedia while producing fab content its all distributed through the #dotcons and in the end they aspire to be the new @guardian to take the role of #traditionalmedia This is fair anufe but the wider “we” need to balance this with #grassroots media which is a non #mainstreaming mission.

Most #NGO agrenders are #mainstreaming this is an easy to see view.

I played a role in training thousands of grassroots “journalists” over the last 25 years at #undercurrents, #indymedia, #visionontv and now #OMN the majority that are still creating media went onto build there carriears in the mainstream and #NGO sectors few stayed in non #mainstreaming production missions. Cant blame them for this, though no alts were sustained from this which was why we did the training.

In each case grassroots/alt structures were devoured by the #deathcult pushing the need for mainstreaming survival – cant blame people for this.

BUT we need a working alternative if we are going to change the world that does not kill and displace billions of people over the next 100 years #XR

learning for expirence the #OMN is a political/tech tool to mediate this issue.

A humane project to push balance back into the current #deathcult flow

I think it is time to talk about giving up our desire for total control and moving to thinking about the world as flows rather than static. Our illusionary “static” individualism is a mental illness that makes us powerless to resist the displacement and death of billions of us over the next 100 years due to fascism/ #climatechaos forcefully rebalancing the human/natural world.

Static view is “individualism” its all about you as a selfish mythical island.

Flow view is “social” is all about you embedded in the flow of social/ecological realty.

You need “power” to urgently rebalance these views, social tech is a good step to this “power”. The #OMN project is a clever useful humane project to push balance back into the current #deathcult flow. For the religious crew this is a #lifecult for the humanistic its just the right thing to do.

Shovels and compost are a good metaphor.

Security concepts tend to be from the conservative ideological viewpoint

With the #OMN building progressive alt tech we cannot repeat the behaver of the #dotcons as it’s a different environment, we need different amenders.

“The security context is the relationships between a security referent and its environment. From this perspective, security and insecurity depend first on whether the environment is beneficial or hostile to the referent, and also how capable is the referent of responding to its/their environment in order to survive and thrive.”

Approaches to security are subject of debate.

For example, some argue that security depends on developing protective and coercive capabilities in order to protect the security referent in a hostile environment (and potentially to project that power into its environment, and dominate it to the point of supremacy). The #geekproblem strives for this outcome without putting it into words.

The #OMN argue that security depends principally on building the conditions in which equitable relationships can develop, partly by reducing antagonism between actors, ensuring that fundamental needs can be met, and also that differences of interest can be negotiated effectively.

Some traditional view of security

* Access control – the selective restriction of access to a place or other resource.

* Authorization – the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources related to information security and computer security in general and to access control in particular.

* Countermeasure – a means of preventing an act or system from having its intended effect.

* Defense in depth – a school of thought holding that a wider range of security measures will enhance security.

* Identity management – enables the right individuals to access the right resources at the right times and for the right reasons.

* Resilience – the degree to which a person, community, nation or system is able to resist adverse external forces.

* Risk – a possible event which could lead to damage, harm, or loss.

* Security management – identification of an organization’s assets (including people, buildings, machines, systems and information assets), followed by the development, documentation, and implementation of policies and procedures for protecting these assets.

* Threat – a potential source of harm.

* Vulnerability – the degree to which something may be changed (usually in an unwanted manner) by external forces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security

If we are building projects for progressive ends, we need to balance the conservatism in these ideas with approaches, this is a little understood simple path.

Why use the hashtags?

The #OMN is based on “nothing new” as a core project process. Though we do describe things in different ways than they are normally described, we use everyday metaphors for the language of computing and coding where necessary, we use nature metaphors where possible.

We have lived in a deeply damaging era for the last 40 years in economics we have neo-liberalism (metaphor #deathcult) in thinking and education post-modernism these two have created many bad effects (metaphors #geekproblem #encryptionist #stupidindividualism #dotcons #fashernista etc) that have shaped how people act and think, we have internalised these post-truth into normal everyday worldviews. These are going to undermine our cultures, society, and most impotently destroy our ecology (metaphor #XR)

We change the language to brake out of this “normal” world-view to build an opening for people to see a different view (also am dyslexic and can only think by making up ideas so its a good fit for me). The current “normal” thinking and expressions are too damaged to be of much use in real social change.