Rebooting the openweb

Published Date 9/20/16 2:42 PM

The OMN is based on a simple understanding that the last 10 years have been wasted on #dotcons and #encryptionists delusions. In this time #NGO’s, activists and at-geeks have wasted the #openwebs potential to shift society to a more humane path.

To move beyond this decaying circle, we need to #reboot the basic infrastructure that has been allowed to decay. Early “#web02” was based on open features that crossed website boundary’s in a way unthinkable today. A partial list of has been complied here https://medium.com/@anildash/the-lost-infrastructure-of-social-media-d2b95662ccd3#.rcs7irbas

To take this needed path the #OMN project can be built out to overlap many of the projects listed, at its core it is aggregation, linking and metadata. This is one of the steps for the needed #reboot

Publishing – we have no problem with this though technically (though phones are becoming more of an isolation issue) there are lots of existing CMS and tools outside the #dotcons that can be used, many of them are kinda #4opens though most miss the #KISS part.

Search – this is lost and hard to regain, but the is space for a clever use of “adblocking” browser plug-ins replacing adverts with native #openweb content (like the #OMN flows) while obscuring the data mining that the #dotcons are cash powered by.

Comments – this is a hard one to solve, but the problem is meditated by linking back to the source of articles. To OMN this part could be done with a few open standards – but pushing this out would be hard. A back burner issue.

Responses – can use the existing “open standards” maybe choosing a KISS implementation to #reboot

Likes/Favourites – we build a back end version of this as core to the OMN, how to front end this is an interesting avant-garde project that we should implement in different “standard” ways after OMN boot up.

Updates – is core to what the OMN is.

Identity – try #rebooting a KISS implementation of the existing open standards to use this in the OMN roll out, use it, but don’t push it hard as It’s going to be hard to overcome the #dotcons on this one.

Friends list – half core to the OMN, can attempt to #reboot this as part of the #RSS “object” aggregation your identity is an object to be aggregated.

Following – is a core part of the RSS OMN project.

Syndication – this is the core of the project, using existing tools based on RSS

API – a #reboot of Atom pub is a likely useful part of the OMN for the synchronisation of content.

Metadata – in the OMN this is a KISS fockonermy that a more systematic labelling rules can be built on. A KISS roll-out of the semantic web is what the OMN is about. Creative commons will be at its core.

Discovery and tagging – is what the OMN is, and it allows easy uptake by alt-media producers, who wonts content to be seen by more people and traffic driven to their sites.

Analytics – can be built up as the project expands, the current #dotcons tools will work fine on roll-out as it’s just the #openweb.

Advertising – is up to the individual sites (with reference to the CC licensing of content) the tools of the OMN could be used to roll out a #4opens advertising network if someone was interested. The creative use of “adblockers” has a role here?

Aggregation – is what is core to the OMN the back end of this is no more than a “small number” of people. The output is as wide as the openweb allows and can be feed as links into the #dotcons

Time shifting & reading – can be added to the OMN tools using basic user RSS lists.

The Lessons – “there’s (almost) nothing new under the sun.” this is at its core a #reboot of existing projects/standards rolled out as KISS as possible with in the small existing network of alt/grassroots media. From there…

Is the OMN tech complex

Published Date 8/14/16 7:46 PM

There is a hard-to-understand idea that the technology behind the OMN (open media network) is complex. At a base level it is not, it’s the same tech that has been written 1000s of times in the past and uses nearly 20-year-old technology.

What is complex is the ideas and social understandings behind the ideas of using this “stupidly simple” technology in the OMN.

Firstly, it’s needed to understand that Alt-media and the open web in general is F**cked. Once past this point, it becomes easier. Secondly an understanding of the forces that F**cked is both on their side: the #dotcons, Facebook, uber, Amazon etc and on our-side, our encryptionist geeks, NGO social media gurus, process vampires etc.

We don’t currently have power to affect their side, so let’s look at our side, in the sense of understanding the OMN. It’s based on the #4opens and none of our guys like this combination for different reasons. It’s based on KISS – our geeks don’t like building on the old and our politicos are pushing the #fashionista of the vapours avant-garde, so both reject the “old” foundation ideas/tech of the #OMN.

The idea is very simple – that we get alt-media groups and sites to be part of a network so they become bigger than their parts. And a very basic issue is solved, they link to each other, which currently the isolated silos do not consistently do. The link is the currency of the web, in this we all become richer and have wider outreach on the “#openweb”.

The “innovation” of the OMN is the use of RSS articles as a database exchange format. We thus create a redundant, distributed network of databases holding and displaying (linking) to our collective history. Why RSS? Without it, we have to get agreement and write custom code for every site that wants to join. With RSS, it’s copy/paste and go on 98% of existing sites on the open web. The first is self limiting and impossible to grow, the second just works. There is no complexity at all at this basic level and no need for site agreements etc.

Troubleshooting this rollout there are issues, but nothing that can’t be solved by tweaking and bodging. The next stage is a little more complex, synchronising these databases and keeping articles up-to-date and exchanging tagged metadata so that the “curating of the flows works”. This will need thinking and programming for real, but nothing that throwing some bandwidth and processing power can’t solve in an “inefficient way” – again, #KISS.

Build it first, scale it second. We are running this out in the small world of alt-media, so geeks keep it KISS. There is a philosophical and design issue that will cause bottlenecks, the CMS’s we will be using are designed as portals/silos not data rivers/media flow sites. Some creative thought can help here. And there is the opening for innovation and new CMS’s at a later time.

To conclude, the blocks on building out the OMN are within our own geeks and politicos and have to be overcome. That is the tech is relatively easy, the social side is complex, Ideas for this? My idea is to form a wide;y skilled affinity group and go for it, lead by example. Other paths, ideas, welcome.

The Stupidly Simple Open Media Network

A common database of media metadata exchanged by RSS in and out, using open industrial standards and neutral unbranded widgets.

Is anyone doing something like this now, and how is your project different?

There are many aggregators of news (eg http://daveriver.scripting.com/, or http://ignoregon.com) but they aggregate with whole #RSS feeds not tags, and new tag feeds cannot be created out of them. Closed-source project #vodpod works by tag only as a premium feature.

Describe the network with which you intend to build or work.

visionOntv (a project for distributing social change video) already smart-aggregates 18,000 videos by RSS. Working with this already curated database, we can build an exemplar node with de facto open standards. The project is a distributed database of the human-moderated metadata of user-generated subject areas, making the choice of this exemplar database appropriate.

Why will it work?

Aims to build a big network, but starts small.

Has multiple redundancy by sharing data via RSS in/out.

Incentives for users

They can publish once on their own site, and the content appears on a range of other appropriate subject sites.
No single hub, no single owner, but rather a horizontal network of nodes. Every node can be a hub (an aggregator). This social/psychological understanding of the need to give people ownership means the project can spread easily.
Spam is user-policed out of networks.

Open industrial standards

RSS and atom are used as the database exchange format, as it is almost universally implemented. The leveraging of existing open standards means that 3/4 of the web can already talk to it. Thus, we can build a scalable, common, decentralised database.

We implement both of the real-time RSS standards PubSubHubbub and RSSCloud

End-users view videos through auto-updating video player widgets driven by boolean logic.

In the future, it would be possible to radically decentralise where the content is itself hosted, using p2p media-serving in parallel with traditional corporate streaming.

Who is working on it?

What part of the project have you already built?

We already have the content and much of the metadata for exemplar node visionOntv. There is a database of 18,000 curated and tagged films. Beginning with this node which we control, we can test solutions to UI / security / spam etc issues. And have a practical outcome with embedded media players. We already have one on every page of UK based New Internationalist magazine’s site, http://newinternationalist.org

How would you sustain the project after the funding expires?

#Flattr is implemented on every page. As a distributed project, it has very low running costs. It would be up to the individual nodes to solve this for themselves. We have a test micro-(hyperlocal) advertising model for funding the visionOntv node.

UPDATE: This project is the seed for the current #OMN project

Technology and Social Change Working with the Facebook Generation

This generation is a complete mess, no surprise after 20 years of submission to the #deathcult:

#Neoliberalism hollowing out economies, replacing solidarity with consumerism.

#Postmodernism fragmenting identity politics into a battlefield of individualism over collective action.
#Dotcons centralizing control, turning the internet into a corporate surveillance machine.

Stepping away from the mess, the real question is: How do we break free?

Our #fashernistas still dodge this conversation, stuck in cycles of performative activism, corporate co-option, and distraction. Instead of chasing the next trendy tech or ideological bandwagon, we need to refocus a #KISS path:

#OMN (Open Media Network) – Building grassroots, independent media outside corporate control.
#4opens – Prioritizing transparency, collaboration, and openness in our tools and governance.
Reclaiming #DIY activism – Moving beyond digital spectacle to real-world action and organizing.

The path isn’t more #geekproblem tech fixes or empty branding exercises, it’s a radical grassroots step to collective agency. Time to move.