Talking about hope and dispair in tech

Q. A lot of evil stuff happens via the cyberweb, no doubt. But I would encourage anyone who still knows how it works not to give up on it. Instead, try to work around the BS and design systems which are resilient to adversaries. As conditions of life get harder and the oligarchy turns the screws we need channels of dissident communication, even if they are no longer mainstream ones. Even retro stuff may go under the radar.

A. This is a social tech problem, a #geekproblem and the solution is social tech that steps away from the #geekproblem we cant just keep doing the same #techshit it’s time for composting #indymediaback #OMN are example of this that are currently blocked.

Q. As far as I could understand from what you said, what would then be exactly the social related problem to solve ? Are you referring to the way spying agencies like the CIA that is dominating the hacktivist scene, are creating “trends” on how to be safe online, which have most of the time no true impact regarding the possibilities of such agencies to continue spying and having social control? So you mean it’s a matter of being good at creating counter propaganda to cancel

A. You are describing the problems, then adding a layer of self-destruction to the problem, that’s not helpful. The #openweb has been “destroyed” by some forces you name. But we have also played a role in destroying it ourselves in refection to the real problems you highlight. We have little power over the first and more power over the second. It’s hopeful to think about this #geekproblem

Q. The #openweb wasn’t destroyed exactly. If you look at the numbers of websites over time, the open web is still there, but what happened is that almost all of the attention got captured by a small number of enormous corporate sites. The corporate sites made themselves critical conduits for search and discovery of news and views, such that the notion of “web surfing” has become almost obsolete. Google search increasingly won’t show much of the open web, because it’s not within the targeted ads business model.

A. yes my point, the #openweb is under a thin veneer of corporate crap. The #fedivers is a tiny break out of this that seceded because it was “accidentally” anti #geekproblem we need to be hardcore anti #geekproblem is the is to be HOPE 🙂

Q. The success of the fediverse did have a very large element of luck to it. Before 2017 it was doing very badly, and I remember unsuccessfully trying to persuade people to try GNU Social instead of going on Facebook. Even people who hated Facebook were reluctant to try the fediverse. Also my interpretation is that ActivityPub was originally a corporate idea but that the corporates lost interest, leaving its development to a few remaining grassroots activists. If the corporates had stayed that ActivityPub would probably be something quite different.

A. Yep, gave me hope, though it’s failing now – we have to stop fucking up this grassroots tech. A start is talking about the #geekproblem and using these to start composting #techshit

Q. The fediverse isn’t failing as such, but is becoming an established technology and so is no longer shiny or something which a clueless tech journalist would want to breathlessly scribble about as a new phenomena. Like XMPP and other previous protocols it is getting into the “plateau of productivity” where it mostly “just works”. There are complaints about lack of spec development, and some of those are justified. But ActivityPub doesn’t need to do all the things, it only needs to do one job well – that of being a social network protocol.

A. yes, it’s not failing in its own terms. But it is not heading to success in the bigger picture of being a alt to the #dotcons I should know being involved for the last few years outreaching it to the #mainstreaming that understands it has a #closedweb problem. The #EU outreach is interesting in this and likely also going to fail in the wider mission. It’s hard to push #openweb in a era controlled by #stupidindividualism and capitalism/alt diesper.

Q. It depends on what the EU’s wider mission is, but I expect that it’s not really a grassroots type of mission anyway. Whatever the machinations or motives of the EU, we do need to maintain a viable space for people who actively don’t want to be stuck in the corporate hellscape. And we shouldn’t assume that the EU will continuously bankroll some projects.

A. At the #EU it’s a power politics fight between the need for #open in a organization that is all about #closed people know they need to change but are only brave to pretend to do this. Am interested if a little crack of #open might be enough to undermine the monolith. Problem is everyone is up for selling out #open to grab a bit of #closed so only weak #open PUSH is all we have, needs to be sharper and harder push. Think stake and vampire level of PUSH with a few blows of a mallet to drive the point home. #open has power over closed, just like light over darkness.

A conversation on trust/control in social technology

Q. In a nutshell, my manifesto could be “form your own little communities and federate them”

A. What would be the “common” understanding/agreements/standards that would bridge these communities, or would it Only be code, if only code what standards?

Q. Federation just depends upon the willingness to do so. The code is just the plumbing which makes it happen. And I think nearly all fediverse federation is opt-out, so that you are federating by default but can opt-out (block) if you want to.

A. Interesting to look at #peertube backend for a opt-in federated model, this aproch is the social/technical model for the social/tech of the #OMN project. That is building a human network first, technology is to support and mediate the very strong #geekproblem that is #blocking the human change/challenge we need #KISS

Q. Opt-in is ok if you are trying to build a small federation or an institution with different departments (eg a federation of libraries with particular rules and membership criteria).
I don’t think the fediverse would have been as successful if it had been opt-in from the beginning, though.

A. The #peertube network is an working example of this opt-in for content sharing. Think commenting is opt-out. It’s not got any “social” UX for this, which is why its kinda limited at mo… it suffers from the #geekproblem like just about all coding projects so worth looking at/using but its not core #OMN

Q. The problem with peertube was that the way it was federated initially was pretty bad, and the large majority of the videos being posted were not self-made and were just copyright violations, inviting legal takedowns. Initially, they also didn’t have enough moderation capability to combat disinformation and spam.
Often developers are expecting a twee world in which everyone is nice, but this is never the case for social networks. That expectation has a lot to do with the socio-economic position of commercial software development and its demographic homogeneity.

A. think the resion they did not do good moderation was a question of priorates, we have endemic BAD history for most of our tech, good to keep this in mind.
There are two paths out of the mess you touch on, one is social, one is hard tech. Agen we have only BAD history of thinking about this, good to keep this in mind.
The #geekproblem that writes this bad history is #BLOCK ing the social technology we need, good to think about this.

#OMN #KISS #OPENWEB notice the last hashtag, we DO NOT NEED more #closedweb if we have any hope of mediating the #geekproblem for tech/social progressive outcomes that we so urgently need.

Q. And opt-in is kinda closed. “Your name’s not down, you’re not coming in”. That sort of thing. Exclusivity isn’t really going to move the needle on anything, though.

A. This reply is a #geekproblem view of the thinking.
Good to look at a social view, all society are based on #TRUST and healthy society have more reliance on trust and unhealthy society more reliance on “hard” process/structure.
There are academic bases to this, a sadly right-wing view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_societies
The #geekproblem fails in building “good trust” based society, it’s an endemic failing of our tech/thinking.
TRUSTLESS is the #geekproblem good to think about this when coding social/technology.
We need to build tech social networks that “fail” so that human beings can fix this “failing” based on TRUST and from this build a real progressive society.

Q. I don’t advocate trustless. You can’t prove trust merely by doing some complicated blockchain math. Trust is earned, or broken, by people. Not by machines.
Also, vaguely related to #chatcontrol. The EU is going to lose a lot of trust by trying to do policing-by-algorithm. The algorithm approach is a sort of abuse of trust.

A. the #OMN is this project: “We need to build tech social networks that “fail” so that human beings can fix this “failing” based on TRUST and from this build a real progressive society.”
No geeks/technologist are building this, let alone thinking like this. The #geekproblem we need to mediate for any outcome.

Leave the #EU to one side on this, as they are well hopeless on social technology, though some of them are looking (with blindfolds on)

Q. I’ve been around the block enough to have seen many online communities fail. I think you have some experience of that also.
When communities fail, there can be a lot of bad outcomes, and sometimes it’s actually fatal. Social networks are a lifeline for a lot of people and when the network fails so do its members.
This isn’t even about narrowly technical failures. Social engineering attacks such as the ones of the last few years can cause enough aggravation and fear that people just lose trust and quit.
So when building this type of software, we need to be mindful of the potential consequences, and not design failure into the system. People’s social lives are not a demolition derby for the entertainment of others.

A. it’s normal, that you are finding it difficult to see the point am talking about. All humane relationships fail It’s what makes us human, the #geekproblem trying to fix this is taking away our humanity. You see this in both mainstream #dotcons like #failbook, and you also see it in all ALT_TECH it’s a (social) systematic problem.
Build stuff that is messy, human. Please DON’T TRY AND FIX problems created by the problem you are trying to fix is basic. Take the #geekproblem blindfold off is a good step.

Reading this book would help https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.101521/2015.101521.The-Sciological-Imagination_djvu.txt

Real social change needs shared storys

Horizontal people are always getting fucked over by vertical people as the first gives away “power” to build social where the second “concentrates” power to use individual.

Horizontal only has social outcomes if the is a shared world view. It is easy to defeat if it has non #stupidindividualism

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Examples of shared world views are #4opens

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Vertical people will keep wining in till we have some shared world-view on the progressive/left and some examples of practical working alternatives for people to rally round #OMN

Stepping away from our tech mess – you need to compost it

It’s encouraging that more people are questioning whether we really need another new tech project. The truth is that most new projects are unnecessary. They solve imaginary problems, reinvent existing tools, or add to the growing pile of #techshit.

Before building anything, do a review. Ask simple questions: Is it open? Does it strengthen the commons? Does it distribute power? Does it solve a real social problem? Then publish that review. Let’s build a culture where communities evaluate technology together instead of chasing novelty. We need to do better.

The last decade of #techchurn has buried us under mountains of abandoned apps, duplicated projects and half-finished platforms. This isn’t just a technical problem; it’s a social one. Years of #mainstreaming have stripped away social purpose, while endless reinvention has consumed the time and energy that could have gone into maintaining and improving what already worked.

Some of this mess needs to be composted, not everything should be saved. The useful ideas, working code and lived experience should be recovered and reused. The rest can decompose into fertile ground for building something more humane.

From a grassroots perspective, one of our biggest problems is that many of the alternatives we once had have been hollowed out. Community media, social centres, cooperative technology and radical organising didn’t disappear because they failed completely. Many were absorbed, professionalised or defunded by the #NGO world, turned into projects for #fashernistas, or simply worn down by forty years of #deathcult thinking disguised as “common sense”.

That history matters. Many people wonder why motivation feels so low today. Part of the answer is that previous generations experienced real alternatives. Imperfect, often messy, but real. Anarchist projects, ecological movements, cooperative media, community technology and socialist experiments created spaces where people could participate rather than simply consume.

Most of those spaces have been dismantled, enclosed or forgotten. So let’s stop pretending we have to invent everything from scratch. Let’s recover what worked. Let’s learn from what failed. Let’s reboot the best of those traditions using federated, infrastructure like the #Fediverse and #OMN. Not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as the foundation for new experiments rooted in today’s reality.

Innovation isn’t about endless novelty, it’s about carrying forward what has lasting value. That’s the path beyond #techchurn.

Dogmatic liberalism and the geek

Good to look at data and metadata for what it is, social glue that holds society together.

Our #deathcult worship separates and atomise people, as does privacy and security coded by the #geekproblem

Take a moment to step back, our contemporary coding is shaping https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism

It’s obviously true that society/ecology is sick from this blinded worship.

From this dogmatic liberalism, one thried is our society’s moving to corporate socialism. That is “law” and norms are shaped to value a tiny number of the nastiest people at the “top”.

Data and metadata is privatised, increasingly “National socialism” is the “common sense” #mainstreaming we code for and agenst.

To address this #geekproblem some of us need to step away and code outside “liberalism” and not in reaction to fascism.

#OMN #OGB #indymediaback are #openweb native projects.

A conversation on the #geekproblem

A. We compost the current tech shitpile by #4opens to weed out 90% of the crap so as a first step we only have to work through the 10% then we are trying projects like #OGB and #OMN to work base on trust links to sift this last down to 1% then it’s human to human scale where we can build links/community’s out wider.

I think we have a good first step, if we can move the projects past the current #blocking

Q. I think you need to breakdown what needs to be done and what you’d like to be done into small chunks to get past some of the blocking.

Especially if you want tech hours on it, at the moment.

Because there are folks there looking for a project to contribute to, but they aren’t always sure how to contribute.

A. Not how protest camps or squats, or hippy gathering happens. They are grassroots #DIY were people “just know” what to do because it has to be done to create the “world” around them.

Here you are describing the #geekproblem as a path out of the “problem” am addressing. Protest camps, squats and hippy gatherings all happen in the “real world” and are made by “real people” so “geeks” could/need to do all of them gives you an idea where the “problem” is 🙂

Q. Possibly even put the bite sized chunks into a toot and make it an appeal for help. Because yes we do have issues in the tech community with ignoring the negativity but sometimes folks will make grabby hands for the chance to do something positive, even a tiny thing to move a project forward.

A. have been working on this for 20 years, we can’t “solve” this problem from “inside” the problem. Change/change is needed from meany people to shift the #blocking culture. Am one voice, it requires a community, yes the are tools #4opens #OGB #OMN etc are useful. If the chicken and egg “problem” can be mediated.

“All code is ideology solidified into action – most contemporary code is capitalism”

You and your wider community can take the #4opens and judge codeing projects, thus discard 90% of them. The remaining 10% will have obvious holes that then people can focus on, examples are the projects I push. By doing this, building up and widening our “culture” we can focus on the 1% that is really important. From this we change the world as default, and likely our nature. Of course, it’s not this simple and challenge/change can easily be negative. It’s this or #deathcult

Q. OK, so consider that some geeks may not see how they can contribute, it could be background, it could be they haven’t had much of an opportunity to interact with the real world of protest.

We need to open the door both ways. Not just make tech more accessible to folks outside tech, but to figure out how to open the door so that techies can start to learn how they can help.

I think it’s a bit like pebbles on a mountain, small steps then we can build on that and make larger momentum.

A. metaphors are the precursor of action, what is needed is a group of people to take action – this is how every protest camp, squat or hippy gathering starts.

We have the metaphors, we have some actions (#4opens process is easy) what we are lacking is groups of people.

We have a soft social problem, NOT a hard codeing problem.

Urgency is always here, the spiky hashtags are there to find these groups. Use them or lose them.

Q. I think that’s something you can build on.

A. “not how protest camps or squats, or hippy gathering happens. They are grassroots #DIY where people “just know” what to do because it has to be done to create the “world” around them.”

The is a boring circal, The is a “I” “you” issue that surprisingly happens less in the above world. On the web in the context of meany of the people I am talking to, I call this #stupidindividualism this hashtag expresses the boring circal.

We can persuade people to our point of view, but it does take energy to do so. Most people don’t come up against life endangering adversity, so it’s hard for them to see the issue. We are still wired to see immediate danger rather than what could be seen as existential danger to life.

A. its a cultural problem, how are cultures created is maybe usefully to look at.

How to do affective change/challenge this is a long history of this visionon.tv

Q. Most folks don’t fall foul of laws etc, because they are never put in a position to be. But when you end up at the edges, that’s when you see the harm. For example, I had a very nieve idea about the UK and the EU and the Union. I’m now at the edges as I’m a 3rd country national in France.

Yet I still have an immense amount of privilege. Refugees are harmed way more by the edges of society and law than I am. But mainstream folks see people at the edges as a threat.

It’s the same with environmental and social protests, people in the mainstream don’t get why the edges harm.

Basic stuff – use it or lose it #OMN

Talking about the #geekproblem in relation to #peertube

Q. Says I need to log into an account to view the video.
A. that’s not good, was just impressed with the custom views in the updated #peertube, so maybe you need to be logged in to see them that’s bad #geekproblem maybe?
#geekproblem maybe? I don’t know how visionOntv works. Could be somebody’s choice given sets of options,, or could be default, or could be accidental combo of selections., Dec 6, 05:33 PM, bhaugen@social.coop”>

I don’t know how visionOntv works. Could be somebody’s choice given sets of options,, or could be default, or could be accidental combo of selections.
A. it’s a well moderated #peertube we updated our server so now have new filtering functions, but it looks like you have to be logged in to share links based on this, i tested in tor browser and cant see the links, likely they have resion for this or might just be #geekproblem – security first?
Q. Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence…
A. to see malice is to miss the point github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube the #geekproblem is simple a critic of a modernist point of view, the persute of control/certainty that diminishes our ability to flourish.
You can call this incompetence if you like, I call it a problem that our “engineering” minded people need to work beyond. The #geekproblem is a good descriptive hashtag.
Can’t share custom filtered video lists URL’s without login being presented. · Issue #4611 · Chocobozzz/PeerTubeGitHub
And the people who created the feature may not have tested all the use cases either…

Or they might have done it on purpose to keep the new feature private…

Technically #peertube is good softwear, but as a social tool it’s not good and few people use it.
Q. Some programmers do not collaborate with real people who want to use their creations while they are creating them.

Did you know they intended to implement the feature you requested, and did you ask to work with them as they did so?

(P.S. if you keep calling them geeks all the time they might not feel like you would be warm and fuzzy to work with…)

A. I was talking to them from before the project was launched… though they have become more distant since they got funding – a different problem, though connected problem

Good codeing, bad social – kinda the #geekproblem

On the subject hamishcampbell.com/tag/geekpro of funding, I cover it more widely on the blog.

Basically funding alowes the geeks to be geeks when the funding comes from geeks.

If you think that’s bad, though, it’s even worst when it comes from academics 😉

Lived and worked through 30 years of this tech shit. Composting, we need some composting 🙂

End thought

The #geekprolem all ready has all the “solutions” It’s why it is has “problem” on the end of the hashtag. A problem that is going to kill millions of people and displace billions over the next hundred years #climatechaos we do need to step away and compost this shit #OMN

Note, I generally only use the “stick” after offering carrots quite a few times. Then alternate between carrot and stick with no plan for a good personal outcome.

Doing this for 20 years, in the medium/long term social change is generally visible. Yes you are right it’s a thankless task but somebody needs to do it and I live on a boat and can sail away, I half joke with the last bit.

This approach has only mediate the problems in my expirence though.

How to fix the damage to the #openweb from the influx of #mainstreaming funding

The issue around funding and its impact on grassroots and radical projects. The balance between maintaining integrity and openness while navigating external funding is a difficult one. The provide a guiding framework, but the challenge remains to implement these in ways that avoid the corruption and failure which is normal for the #NGO funding models.

Running projects on minimal funding forces a degree of focus and prioritization that can be beneficial, but, it also comes with limitations. Trust-based models, like those from the direct action movement in the 1990s, show that alternative funding approaches can work, but they require strong social structures, trust, and transparency.

Finding ways to mediate this tension between the potential of funding and the risks it brings is key. What do people think of a more formalized version of those trust-based funding models, could they work today within the #openweb or #OMN?

We start with the assumption that 90-100% of funding on this subject is simply pored down the drain, most of it into pointless NGO projects and #fashernista individuals “careers”. The best #openweb funders I have found recently https://nlnet.nl/ who have money from NGI Zero which is from the EU

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects

To fix some of these issues:

* https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/Online-governance- openweb tech from the perspective of a radical, grassroots, social technologist this is distilled into a codebase, as a “permissionless” roll-out of frameworks for social groups to form and see/govern themselves. https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/Statements-of-support

* https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/openwebgovernancebody/wiki/Statements-of-support Its easy to see that the #dotcons can not be fixed. The #fashionistas who keep flocking to new “ethical-ish” ones are a problem, not a solution. The are a simple way to judge the value of an “alt/grassroots” tech project. We need to bring this into our funding agenda.

* https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/Open-Media-Network/wiki Simple #OMN is a standards based political software framework to build #KISS and grassroots semantic web of trust links and flows. We do this by outlining a human understandable workflow and then building apps for real-world use. We are agnostic on the underling technology and programming as long as it is based.

The #hashtags are from a “prospective” that push’s rejection from people outside that perspective

The mess we need to compost is that the verticals are unthinking in their hierarchies, which turns the “value” of horizontals into a negative thing. Meanwhile, the horizontals despise the “power” plays of the verticals and take every measure to block their outcomes.

The world, however is one of balance. Both perspectives have roles and shifting values depending on the problems we collectively need to address. For those pushing #BLOCKING – a few sips to quench your thirst.

  • The conversations sparked by these flows are what truly matter. Grassroots structures grow from this collective perspective, feeding into shared social knowledge. The #hashtags act as a net, gathering working groups ready to embrace change and challenge.
  • In the end, all change and challenge is practical. People who only talk without action are naturally carried to the side streams, mingling until they either join the flow of practical work or fade away.
  • Yes, in your arrogance, you might call this arrogance – and from a different perspective, you might be right – but still blind. If you’re from the same perspective, I’d say nuts and nutters are only useful as part of a balanced diet. Maybe meditate on that before cracking more nuts. (I’m still refining that metaphor).

If you enjoy playing games, you can spot the word magic in the #hashtags. If you’re more practical, you can translate them into traditional definitions, for example, #deathcult = neoliberalism, #dotcons = the boom-and-bust cycles of the dotcom era, #fashernista = someone fashionable in any subject, i’s not complex at this level.

The complexity lies in the perspective that weaves these elements into a coherent story. Yes, this storytelling could be seen as arrogance – if you choose to view it that way. But that judgment itself makes you a “nut” from the very perspective you critique.

Circles, magic, nets, outcomes – #OMN

Influx of EU funding into the Fediverse – all together push through, the HARD block crumbles

Getting a good outcome is hard… And this current influx of EU funding risks doing more damage than good to the health of the #Fediverse, if it continues along its present agenda. Yes, the #Fediverse already has its own lifestyle-driven mess, but we can try to mediate the damage driven by funding first. If we succeed there, maybe the lifestyle drift can self-mediate in time.

Aiming for a better outcome, what we’re looking for is social change and challenge with less mess. This page looks at some of the best funding we’ve found http://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects Not an attack, but opening a conversation on an obvious issue.

We can also look at funding that is being completely wasted, but that’s likely outside our influence. Lets keeping it positive (When We Can), I like to keep things positive… if possible.
But let’s be honest — a lot of people are BLOCKING, and that’s going to cause fire and a LOT of smoke. This is what real social change/challenge looks like: murky. Focus on #KISS — Keep It Simple — to see through the smoke.

Transparency matters, it’s hard to imagine how you can do a left-wing project without showing your workings:

  • Open/Trust = left
  • Fear/Control = right

That’s the core framing this page is about.

#Dotcons & poisoned agenda, Yep, the whole #dotcons side of the EU funding agenda is poison.
It only feeds the mess. And as I’ve pointed out before, most funding ends up poured straight down the drain. Sadly, that’s the default outcome.

#IndymediaBack – Learning the right lessons, one thing to keep in mind: I think we (the #Indymedia crew) learned the wrong lesson from the repression and state raids. We pushed fear/control as the solution, and this added to the #closedweb mess. But as the #Fediverse now shows, the path should have been open/trust — That’s the #openweb path we abandoned. That split ripped Indymedia apart, and we’ve been stuck in the #dotcons mess ever since.

Simplicity as Strategy, when making judgments, keep it #KISS — Simplicity is what cuts through the mess. Shovels and compost, is the #OMN approach.

Trauma, Repression & Healing, Yes, trauma is real. That’s why I lean into basic ways of looking at these things. From there, it’s up to people to build up, DIY style — a real grassroots approach.

Practical approaches, watch the film:

I made this for the legal support crew of a major campaign. The repression was ongoing and intense — But the healing came through mass participation, like walking calmly through police stop and search zones. That likely helped to mediate a lot of growing trauma.

Final thought: #Openweb – all together push through, the HARD block crumbles. We’ve got work to do. Let’s keep it grounded, open, and as clear as we can through the murk.

Misunderstanding – Out reaching the #OMN #openweb projects.

I start to understand the misunderstanding, blocking many of the people outreaching the #OMN. It’s a DIY project there is the assumption that people will see the need and fill in the missing bits. The “missing bits” have a function, to be filled in otherwise we would be pushing clean non-messy #dotcons world view which is a very different project.

Maybe this is hard to see, but we would be doing something utterly pointless if it is not messy. So people pushing clean are not helping, rather they are #BLOCKING

Must stress the utterly pointless here, as people have done slick/controlled alts many times over the last 30 years and in the medium term this has always proven to be pointless.

It’s a world view problem that’s going to kill us, well lots of us.

Quote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARiaiyHrijw

Meany people reply to outreach by telling the #dotcons story as if it were common sense… where the outreach is telling DIY, so communication is missing/past each other.

The #OMN is offering tools, people are generally looking for shiny toys a different world view. From the DIY prospective shiny toys are just rubbish to add to the landfill were tools you can build a new world if you are motivated and have care and focus.

To put this bluntly, its #DIY or death as #XR says in the streets. Hope this #KISS aproch helps to build a bridge – up to you guys to hold this bridge in place.

#OMN projects are tools for YOU to change/challenge the world we live/die in.

Taking part in online #openweb events – and resisting the urge to bite people

Looking at this event https://2021.ngiforum.eu the is way to meany stuffed shirts, technological fantasists (#blockchain) and a lot of #EU money what could go wrong…

Spent an hour looking through the list of participants opening in new tab all that said something interesting. Of these more than 2/3’s had the tag blockchain, so closed them, and then looked at the rest, then closed them… as we all know the is little hope in places like this, but worth a look, sometimes you find something useful. Someone has to turn over the tech shit pile to make compost.

Last week attended the online event by the Knight Foundation (huge #openweb funders for the last 10 years) in the USA on #reimagining the Internet. It was 100% about the #dotcons kinda nutty, how bad things are in the funded #NGO #openweb world.

With this in mind, I moved the to its own space https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki it’s a useful #openweb tool for moving tech projects in to the right piles.

Here are 10 sample #4opens reviews to help you to understand what it’s about and how you can use this simple way of judging if a project is worth supporting or not unite.openworlds.info/Open-Med

Please add to this, sign up for the site and add more or just publish them on your own #openweb site with the hashtag #4opens

UPDATE

Why go to these events? It’s about connection to people building bridges and resources for bridge building. The problem is all the resources at these events are poured down the drain and/or consumed by social parasites – the chattering classes.

I spend a bit of time going to the events every 10 years to see if this has changed. COVID-19 and the on lining of the events is a time to do this. This time, like last time, I am feeling an “opening” but think the parasite classes are going to be stampeding through it. For a useful outcome we would need a soughted #openweb group to take up space, without this the opening is not going to have any good outcome.

This mythical group does not exist, there are individuals scattered about, but nothing that has much social power to be able to work with/bridge the power politics.

Kinda sad and bad but its where we are at #XR

UPDATE

This strategy can work (up to a point) to get resources, the last time, 10 years ago, I got a big chunk of dosh to set up http://visionon.tv which the remains of is funding the #OMN infrastructure.  But this is another story – you can likely find articles about this back on this blog.

UPDATE

In any burocracy there are always a few people trying to get out, It’s what bridges are for, and there will likely be lots of people on our side who want to get in, also what bridges are for hamishcampbell.com/2021/04/16/ a post that touches on this bridging subject and why it has value.

UPDATE

Only now reading up on the background of this #EU stuff. “What is Horizon Europe? Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation, with a budget of €95.5 billion.” No wonder the is such a feeding frenzy of pigs at the trough was wondering why this sudden interest in the #openweb

UPDATE

This comes to mind when talking to just about everyone on subjects like this today, “They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.”