Offering a real alternative to the dotcons world

Published Date 10/17/17 4:59 PM

This is a quite #reboot of the #openweb going on. This #4opens project has nearly 1 million users https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) It’s one of the use it or lose it moments for life outside #failbook. It would be a bad time for progressive funders to start to prop up the #dotcons world if we don’t try to change direction, sad outcome is invertible.

A funding application to set up/boot up both an “NGO” and an “Activism” instance of Mastodon. Each could have different “terms of service” but would both talk to each other and the wider #AP networks. It’s time and not a #dotcons and works #OMN

Would need a crew of 3 people part-time for 6 months roll out then 6 months sustaining after this year the project should be self-sustaining due to low running costs. Can use patron and occasional donation drives.

Crew
Hamish – lead fixer and Activist outreach
Sys admin – to set up the servers and keep them running
NGO Outreach – to outreach to NGO’s and get them to buy into the #openweb project.

Funding
5-7K funding for the first year. From Lush and Edgefund
This would mostly be part-time wages, with some server and outreach costs. A monthly donation would go to the development https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

The project would be organised on Github as a #4opens project as a part of an open media network.

Don’t trust the fashionista

Published Date 9/25/17 4:24 PM

Thinking about #Uber and the dysfunction of #Facebook.

It’s time to #reboot many parts of the #openweb With the “visibility” of the failing of #dotcons such as #failbook privacy/obscured agronomic control of you, #uber and the race to the bottom culture.

The will be a plausible “class” of people who come up with convincing sounding solutions, these #fashionista are not part of any solution and are a clear and historical core to our failers in the past.

I understand it’s hard to see the differences of tech projects, what is worth supporting and what not. We have issues from two different directions that have to at least a little understood to have a hope of supporting projects that have the possibility to be part of a real LINKING alt.

* #fashionista thinking/working

* the #geekprobelm

These are opposite side of the same coin.

“A river that needs crossing – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity”

A good first step solution to both is the #4opens

They will dis-empower the worst of the #fashionista thinking by shining light on their actions and mediate to a better outcome the “closing push” of the #geekproblem by keeping the LINKING in place.

Simple and sweet, a first step solution in a hashtag 😉

Fashernistas

Published Date 4/18/17 11:53 AM

I have been talking about the fashernisatas for the last few years, its an idea/group that I have been struggling to work with my whole time in the alt/grassroots. So what is a #fashernista?
A group of individuals who value/push their own individual advancement over the needs of the croup and community, generally they do not realise or see that they are doing this. This has the end effect of diluting and killing off possible alternatives and selling “grassroots” to NGO’s and corporatist agenda’s. #fashernista taking over projects in hand with the #geekproblem has lead to endless dead-ends in all alt/grassroots tech. Most recently this has manifested in encrypt everything, bitcoin/blockchain ect. This is a dead end.

The #OMN linking project is basic tech that I have been working on for more than 10 years, in past times the has been more interesting tech/social problems in alt/grassroots media to work on so linking has taken a back seat as it’s basic stuff. At this stage, we only have the basics left. Let’s take a first step linking alt/grassroots producers, and build tools to push this into a #rebooted #openweb to start the needed move out of the #dotcons ghetto’s. Let’s try as hard as we can to avoid #fashernisa take over of this basic #reboot. Fashernistas will set up parallel projects, raise parallel funding, push these into the traditional media and dominate the #dotcons conversation. None of this inevitable pointless #fashernista noise should distract from the basics, as it will just flash bang and fad into nothing. Keep the basics going, linking, building. In the long term the rest is noise, distraction, for the conspiracy minded it’s our very own “false flag”.

Hummm… how to spot drift into the #fashernisat agenda?

There is a strong anti-dote in the #4opens

One more step OMN

Published Date 3/15/17 8:20 PM

The OMN will allow you to find good quality alt\grassroots content. It’s a way of getting distribution outside #Facebook and #Twitter to push up the use of the #openweb. It’s a stupidly simple social project using existing basic web technologies.

The OMN is an open network, so we call each of the sites “nodes” as they are small parts of the wider World Wide Web (WWW). Openworlds is the test node/site of the network, currently with links to 10 embeds on sites as an initial soft roll out. We are aiming to expand this out up to 100 sites over the summer for the hard launch.

If you have a website and want to play a part in this “soft roll out” go to openworlds

Step 1: If you are interested in only some subjects or groups, click on group tags (with @ in front) and/or subject tags. You can choose as many as you like and then only these will show up in your river embed. Then click the RSS link.

Step 2: Take the URL of the RSS feed, in the new window that opens. Go to your CMS/site/blog and install an RSS display/widget and add the RSS URL to it. You can use the formatting options to change the number of items and what info to display to make it look nice.

That’s it for now, your site is now a part of an open alt/grassroots media network. Playing a role in linking and cooperating to build a progressive worldview, empowering people to build a better world.

Were is value online

Published Date 1/12/17 6:24 PM

Its interesting to think for a moment about how widely posts on the #openweb and #failbook are seen. On #failbook an average post on my time line might be seen/read by 10 people and a dog, a good shared post a few hundred people. On my blog an average post would be a few hundred people and a good post 10,000’s of people maybe more. its easy to forget that #failbook is a #dotcon in real terms not just in idealogical arguments. The value is on the #openweb – how have people forgotten this?

EC “Cos convenience and the software works”

Yep thats why am pushing the #OMN so the is a space to do something about this.

You do all know that posting polatics on failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness

Published Date 12/20/16 9:20 PM

You do all know that posting polatics on #failbook is a pointless circle of nothingness. Please stop and do something more usefull.

We have a clective Liberal fantasy in the is an idea that #dotcon can be social useful. Its not what the money (billions) was invested in. They “invested” into a silo/portal for capturing data and capturing users. Letting this “value” free is a liberal delusion in the sense it dues not payback for investment. Your talking an act of enlighten philanthropy or old fashioned nationalization to keep the value for the people who created it – the users.

We now have a problem that most of our best alt media producers are children of the #dotcon and have little or no understanding of the #openweb We need to express positive views of value. #linking #4opens etc all very basic stuff and not hard to do. I wont practical open ideas on were to start on this.

#moveon

Human beings are by nature social creatures, we link

“The Ring slowly but inevitably corrupted its bearer, regardless of the bearer’s initial intent. For this reason the Wise, including Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, refused to wield it themselves, but determined instead that it should be destroyed. The corrupting power of the ring was apparently stronger on individuals more inclined to evil and selfishness: it took almost immediate hold of the greedy Sméagol as soon as he saw it, and corrupted Boromir after a few months of near proximity, while its effects were only starting to be seen in the well-meaning Bilbo after his 60 years’ possession.”

On the #openweb the creation of blogging makes personal sites with in reach of a majority of people, the balance between community and individual began to shift. Blogging was about empowering the individual, many geek/fashernista attempts to rebalance this failed, as each tended to be an island, mirroring the individualism of the blogging network they were trying to link. Blogging declined into silo/portals with the growth of SEO and the resulting failer of linking that resulted from this.

In the openweb nothing stayed static, the first to secsede in bringing the social (community) back into this world were the first #dotcon ‘s and the most powerful grew from the worst parts of human nature:

“One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring

This is the shadow of the role of #failbook currently on the #openweb

How to recover from this “capturing of the commons”? One step would be to #reboot the last steps of the #openweb by fixing the balance between individualism in blogging and the community of the human condition. This is surprisingly simple to do, we need to fix the failed geek/fashernista linking and thus #reboot blogging as a core to the #openweb. Almost everything we need to achieve this already exists, it’s a question of an affinity group kicking it into motion. Who is up for building links?

Let the web of trusted links grow (as this is ALL THE OPEN WEB is) and let the data (#4opens) flow over these links. From this trust building, community comes back into both the online and offline worlds.

And if a Dark Lord (Mr Zuckerburg) and his minions (Mr Trump) offer you a shiny ring – don’t take it.

Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt grassroots media

How meany sites link to another alt/grassroots media sits. From this list of 38 UK sites, only 2 link to another site.

Many people find it hard to understand the underlining understandings that push projects based on flow and linking, such as #OMN and #openweb. Here is a short list of activism projects.

Silo

Is a place for holding/hoarding closed data – this is used by the #dotcons to extract funding from “free users” when mainstream/alt silo projects finish, as 99.9% do, the data varnishes and is lost, and in this the effectiveness of any alt building is diminished. Silos do not use open licensing for content re-use. Just about every alt/grassroots media project is a silo. It’s about capturing data. It’s obvious that this is a unthought through issue of “churning”

Portal

It is an idea that you can be the big one, all the small fashionista websites aspire to be the big one and by doing this they are working to the logic of the #dotcon and working against the logic of the openweb. They are building a project to lock their users into their project. Portal and silo are overlapping (but different) ideas for building web projects. In the mainstream, Apple is a prime example of this working. In the alt/grassroots, almost all alt/grassroots media projects are portals. It’s about capturing users, just as silos are about capturing data. For a left wing group this looks much like “recreating the Soviet Union” the one party to rule the state.

Dotcons

Are for-profit data silos in the old days working as portals, more recently they are building out siloed networks as a pseudo networked portal. It’s both sad and bad that many alt media projects unthinkingly aspire to be #dotcons

Link

It is where ALL the value is, on the open web. Without links, content has NO VALUE. This is an obvious statement, its hard to understand the lack of understanding around this simple thing.

RSS

Is a grassroots web standard that is still at the base of many of the #dotcons world but is being pushed into the background of the #openweb by building silos/portals in the grassroots/alt. RSS is like an open LINK with added data, thus adds value to the web. Its a powerful open tool that we still have. An API is like a geek control freak superpower of RSS – the problem is in the complexity/control freak bit…

Geek

A subculture that is control/obscurity and more recently technical solutions to trust (wraparound right) this has always been a closing force on open projects. This helped to strangle the original successful alt/grassroots media projects and is pushing for the shrinking of the open web.

Fashionista

The unthinking desire for new/innovation/conformity. A wider subculture that churns the growth of alt/grassroots so little can grow beyond seedlings.

NGO

Are greedy dispoling of resources, both human and money. The liberals that use bureaucratic funding to push out the geek/fashernista agendas over alt/grassroots projects. These are uneasy friends and clear (invisible) enemies.

Network

It is both a technical thing of wires and frequency and an understanding of mutual aid and of “diversity of strategy”. It’s native to the openweb and should be at the base of any alt/grassroots media project. In the closed #dotcons the widespread use of A/B testing is a pail controlled shadow of this.

4opens

Wikipedia is an example of this. It’s basic stuff, open source project stuff. LINK

Looking at the tech and organising of UK alt/grassroots media. Do sites link to other alt-media projects? Do they support/display openweb standards (RSS)

First DRAFT (please message me with corrections/info)

the canary

http://www.thecanary.co/

Has a RSS feed, regular updates, copyright group silo, it has no outside linking

Reelnews

http://reelnews.co.uk/

UPDATE: site back online, no visible RSS but can find a hidden one. It’s likely copyright and a silo.

(Their website is hacked/down, so posted the #failbook link used to have RSS and regular updates. Anyone know what’s happening? Update they hope the site is back online soon.)

Real Media

http://realmedia.press/

UPDATE: website back online copyright, no visible RSS feed, but you can find ones. It’s a bit of an aggregator but has been suffering from poor spam control. It’s pretty much a portal/silo – but could be more.

(They used to have an interesting website for the tec used, but it ended up being just a silo, they look like they are rebooting? Maybe a another silo? We shall see.)

Update they are rebooting as a linking site, let’s hope it’s not a silo.

Novaramedia

http://novaramedia.com/

Has regular good content, RSS, they are a product of the #dotcons social media wave and good at it. Copyright/CC is not stated. The site is a silo with no outside linking

Counterfire

http://www.counterfire.org/

No RSS feed, starting to look a bit “old left” regular updates, no copyright/CC notice. A silo with no external links

The Bristol Cable – Bristol

https://thebristolcable.org/

No visible RSS feed, it kinda probably tries to obey the #4opens, maybe. It’s a WP blog site, in this it’s a media silo with no external links.

Port Talbot Magnet

http://www.porttalbotmagnet.com/

No visible RSS feed, it mostly fails the #4opens due to copyright, data and organising. It’s a WP blog site, in this it’s a media silo with few if any external links.

New Internationalist – based in Oxford

https://newint.org/

Has RSS feeds, it kinda passes the #4opens using a CC licence for its content. It links to the #visionOntv project.

The Ferret – Scotland, based in Edinburgh

https://theferret.scot/

Looks like the old media transitioning to the new media. No visible RSS feed or copyright/CC notice. Is trying to be “open process” looks like a WP site.

Strike! – based in London

http://strikemag.org/

Looks like an archive of a print mag? Has an RSS feed 🙂

Positive News – based in London

http://positive.news/

Dated looking site, hard to read, no RSS feed and a copyright notice. A silo.

Slaney Street – Birmingham

http://www.slaneystreet.com/

Did not load

Manchester Mule – Manchester

http://manchestermule.com/

Has RSS feed but last article end of 2015 so not an active site. Probably for fills the #4opens.

Co-operative News – based in Manchester

http://www.thenews.coop/

Nasty looking site and no RSS, copyrighted, it’s a silo

Ethical Consumer

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/

No RSS, copy rightish, old looking site.

Marlborough News Online

http://www.marlboroughnewsonline.co.uk/

no RSS, copyright

West Highland Free Press

http://www.whfp.com/

No RSS, copyright, it’s a silo.

Star and Cresent – based in Portsmouth

http://www.starandcrescent.org.uk/

No RSS, no copyright notice? It’s a silo.

Morning Star – based in London

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/

Has an RSS feed but its empty, copyright, silo.

Cambria Publishing Co-operative

http://www.cambriapublishing.org.uk/

Publishes paper books?

Zed Books – London

https://www.zedbooks.net/

paper books and online reading lists, no RSS I can see.

Sheffield Live!

http://web.sheffieldlive.org/

Blake House – based in London

http://blake.house/

No RSS, fashionable calling card website without content, probably copyright?

Media Co-op

http://mediaco-op.net/

Calling card website without content, no RSS, likely copyright.

Ignite Creative – based in Oxford

http://ignitecreative.co.uk/

Calling card website without content, no RSS, copyright.

Shedlight Productions – based in Southampton

http://www.shedlightproductions.co.uk/

Calling card website without content, no RSS, copyright.

Steel City Film and Media Co-op – based in Sheffield

https://www.facebook.com/SteelCityFAM

it’s a #failbook page, maybe open?

Trafford Media & Communications – based in Manchester

(mostly a printer, but also do film production)

http://www.traffordmc.org.uk/

Calling card, no site.

The Community Channel

Community Channel

The granddaddy of NGO media, no RSS feed, likely copyright silo.

Jammu Kashmir TV

http://www.jammukashmir.tv/

It has content, silo?

Open Audio

http://openaudio.co.uk/

Has a working RSS feed

Inform My Opinion

https://audioboom.com/channel/informmyopinion

Has working RSS feed, but it fails in my pod catcher, it’s a page on a #dotcon?

Mydylarama

http://mydylarama.org.uk/

Has RSS feed, copyright, silo?

AMP Worcs

http://www.ampworcs.co.uk/

Calling card.

A Television

http://www.afro-media.org/

Half finished calling card site.

Salfordstar

http://salfordstar.com/

Hastings independent press

No RSS, no copyright/CC notice, a silo with no external links.

http://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/

Corporatewatch

https://corporatewatch.org/

Has RSS feed and CC licence, no external links on front page, it’s a silo but better than most.

bellacaledonia

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/

Has a RSS feed, it’s a silo but the is hope for it.

voxpoliticalonline

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/

it’s a blog in the old school sense, has RSS

evolvepolitics

http://evolvepolitics.com/

it’s a silo with no RSS and no external links

A lot of the original links came from https://www.facebook.com/jdaviescoates

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…

To escape our silo thinking

Published Date 3/10/16 12:01 PM

“A river that needs crossing political and tech culture – On the political side, the is arrogance and ignorance, on the Geek side the is naivety and over-complexity”

What I am highlighting here, Geeks think this is too simple to think about, the politicos have no understanding of this. Both are happy with silos as it gives them “total control” of their tiny things. These isolated siloed islands are no match for the continents that the #dotcons control. The issue here is that nobody cares for the big thing that all these tiny things grow from, this big thing the #openweb is withered from neglect. The shrinking “open internet” is further perverted by political legislation and #dotcons grasping/enclosing in till it becomes a ghost of its old self.

Thinking to escape this sad and bad fate.

The web is made of links:

* Articles are just data objects

* Data flows

* Feeds are living links to move data object flows

* The link is where the value is (google learned this a long time ago)

* Synchronisation and redundancy of data is key to resilience and remembering the past links (value)

This is hard for the politicos to hear, but, content is just something to link to.

This simple thinking is held safe by the #4opens

There is a small resurgence of alt-media projects (such as LINKS ) but each of them is a silo and will likely flower and fade.

Why did the #openweb flower and die over the last 30 years

Published Date 2/22/16 1:17 AM

Why did the thousands of open internet projects fail? Despite large amounts of state, foundation, #NGO funding. There were early successful activist tech projects, all proved to be pointless or withered with success. In all cases I would argue that the underlining fairer was one of ideology, almost all projects worked against the dominate ideology of the net and web itself. Just as the #dotcons burned and bust repeatedly, traditional media was hopeless in till a new generation came along who had an inclining of the underlining working of the new tech ideology.

The few open projects that worked with in the ideology of the web were swamped by the pushing of the funding of the #mainstreaming of the web/internet. I am arguing here that the majority of people making a living in the #openweb/internet world are core to the problem not the solution, I could name hundreds of projected with the word open/radical in um who actively destroyed “open”.

A tiny minority created a world expanding technology based on the ideology and practices of trust based Anarchism. This exploded into the existing tech/communication worlds, pushing aside, pushing over, all the “better” 20th century vertical (ideology) tech already in place. Open became dominant for a while and this open was “locked in” because of a strong ideological thread throughout the standards and structures of the internet/web, the very “chaos” of the #openweb protected it from the “vertical” (20th century) locking of corporates such as Microsoft etal.

Nothing last forever, a new generation came along who merged the “open” back into the “closed” can’t really blame them, they were children of Thatcher and Reagan. Am amazed to have lived though the time of the #openweb, the world really did feel very different for a time. Who are the heroes and who the villeins, this history is unwritten yet, better get to it.

This is my realistic/pessimistic view of where we are at LINK

We face a digital cliff the open internet may be over

Published Date 2/11/16 5:30 PM

The is no consensus on this, here are two views on this subject:

We have Phil Windley who thinks the open internet was a historical fluke http://www.windley.com/archives/2016/02/decentralization_is_hard_maybe_too_hard.shtml here he is talking about the very real view that the internet is finished, that the commons have been enclosed by the #dotcons silos and what remains outside are terminally withered and dying.

Then Dave Winer http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2016/01/26/0936.html who argues that the #openweb comes in waves and what Phil Windley is arguing is but the drawing back of the water before the next wave of open washes in.

My point of view is that both are right, the open internet was a historical “mistake” and with Winer that there are a few waves left, the storm is not over yet. There is a logic to the digitisation of everything and the web was a living example of this let loss, it was a tsunami that crashed over our cultures and this storm is not over yet.

Yes, the commons opened up by the early web was enclosed by #dotcons, but their sea defences are low and weak and the digitisation storm still rages.

We are free to make our lives have meaning in this stormy weather.