Tag: stupidindividualism

Talking about storys and #stupidindividualism

Q. One difficulty that I personally have with your communication methods is your use of hashtags that convey meaning to the people that already know and use them, but are opaque to someone who doesn’t know what they mean.

You end up being only able to communicate with people within your own filter bubble.

What are the ranges of different patterns of communication that you have tried?

Which ones worked more effectively with which audiences?

A. As we talked about before, the #hashtags are a collective social story, but what is obvious is that if there is no collective there is no story… So if you want the story, build the collective to tell the story.

Bit of a chicken and egg issue, ay.

It’s non #mainstreaming change challenge… If nothing changes there is no challenge, thus it’s completely up to “us” not “me” am doing my “modernist” story, as you say if we all do different story’s the is no outcome.

Someone at some point has to add to the story, retell it, shape it and use it for change challenge.

I repeat, I have done my bit, been at the front line of this social story for 40 years and am now sailing off on my lifeboat.

What are “we” doing with this story, that has passed through “my” hands

Anyone can pick up the power of the story or let it fall as sand as we currently do.

Remember you would have to be completely #stupidindividualism to only see this as “my” story, it’s obviously not 🙂

#nothingnew

A sordid story of fear and punishment, and a path to walk away from this

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

People are shaped by the “dominant social thinking” this should not be a radical thing to say as its obverses. People survive by deigning this, blinded to this obverse thinking. To stay blind, they #BLOCK challenges to their blindness.

Why do people choose to be blind in our sunlight world? There is a circle here, people who push #mainstreaming agenda are “reworded” and those who push agenst are “punished”. The desire to be blinded, to live bowed down and prostrate eyes turned to the darkness come from this simple reword and punishment that binds together the current social mess we sadly think is normal.

“(Men) make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

People find meaning and build their lives in the twilight, constantly pushing away glints of light that might illuminant too strongly the social squallier and everyday cruelty there #mainstreaming has pushed out into the shadows away from them, to hide just out of the light.

The human condition has always embedded this desire/need for blindness, yes, sometimes we have rebelled, the era of the enlightenment, some fractions of the 20th century are examples, most times and most people have conformed, we have strong confirmatory today.

This is expressed in different ways in different times, in the post-modern and dogmatic liberal times we live in I find #stupidindividualism to be descriptive, a shard of light to blind the averted eyes, if people take the time to acclimatize to the gloom this illuminates they might find themselves and there “community” a path out of this mess.

The is hope here, you can take the “stupid” away from “individualism” a simple idea, though a not easy path to take #OMN

A conversation about money and the #openweb


A conversation with the #NGO side of social technology:

A. Just booked my place for ePIC next month in Lille. It’ll be my first time on the Eurostar!

https://epic.openrecognition.org

A decade ago, it was the first conference I went to as Mozilla’s Badges & Skills lead. Time flies.

#OpenBadges #VerifiableCredentials #ePortfolios #conference #travel

Q. these things are kinda hopelessly expensive. You have to worship the #deathcult to attend… Hard to know what to do with these two track approaches… Kinda can’t be #openweb are the any that are happening outside the temples of death #XR

Ps this is a metaphor 🙂

A. I think that’s a complicated way of saying you can’t afford to go?

Q. is a social comment about events like this, there are a lot of them. How can non #mainstreaming people get involved in #openweb events like this, a good subject for you to bring up, if you would, thanks. Ps. Not #stupidindividualism I should not have to say that.

A. My opinion is that you can’t have your cake and eat it? You can’t live outside the mainstream, throw rocks at it, and then complain when it doesn’t accommodate you?

Q. yep, I have spent my whole life outside the #mainstreaming, much of it building up and working on #openweb projects and content. Do you not find what you just said cruel and dismissive? Good to think on this and hopefully bring it up at the event. Not picking on you here, or attacking you, social commentary is not a bad thing on the #openweb

A. Social commentary is not what you’re doing here. You’re just replying to me to reinforce your worldview. So no, I don’t think I’m being cruel and dismissive. Perhaps you should think about your theory of change about how you’re going to build a constituency of people to change the world? It’s certaintly not by being a reply-guy 🙄

Q. dismissive and curl second time. Now this is just being a prat “It’s certainly not by being a reply-guy” OK, please have a think about how to bring the #openweb away from the current #mainstreaming that events like this embody (due to cost) as we are heading for social/environmental disaster fast, the is no good outcome from the #deathcult we all worship, we do need a working #openweb for a better outcome.

A. So you reply to me with the #deathcult hashtag after I share excitement about going to an event? And I’m being unreasonable? I’ve never had a positive interaction with you, Hamish. You might wear that as a badge of honour, but I’ve finally realised it’s time to mute you. Good luck.

Q. OK, please have a think about how to bring the #openweb away from the current #mainstreaming that events like this embody (due to cost) as we are heading for social/environmental disaster fast, the is no good outcome from the #deathcult we all worship, we do need a working #openweb for a better outcome.

Talking about the mess we are in

Q. Let’s just STOP worshipping the #deathcult as a first step away from this mess.

We’re living in an age of permanent crisis – let’s stop planning for a ‘return to normal’ | Economics | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/22/economic-models-environmental-crises-fantasy-stable-growth-global-heating

A. I agree that there is no “return to normal”, just as history did not end with the fall of the Berlin wall.

If we mean to be carriers of change, we also need better framing than talking about cults, clans or dynasties. Although they exist, these are not really the main problem and over-simplification leads to non-solution fixes which don’t really fix anything.

Whether we like it or not, we are trapped in the capitalist machine, and cannot easily just step aside from it. Not unless we can buy an island. But even that would be another non-solution.

Material changes are required, and that means people doing things, like re-forestation. Accompanying that will also need to be ideological change, because ideas follow from actions. Changing ideology is not just a question of ceasing to worship a charismatic individual.

Q. the hashtags are metaphors for existing, well-defined terns.

#deathcult is neoliberalism 21st century (or classic liberalism 19th century).

They add emotion and focus to dry academic ideas. And sadly they are descriptive.

Think #XR and #climatechaos in the 21st century, or the Irish potato famine in the 19th century.

I am assuming people can understand this, it’s #KISS so kinda bad if they find it confused.

I talk about #fashernista in other toots, just look up following fashion and apply it to social issues/power to understand this.

Agen it’s #KISS and you would have to be very dim or dogmatic not to understand it.

I can go on for all the hashtags if you like. Together, they tell a story, that has power only if you and others like you start to use them.

DIY grassroots power is NOT doing what you like, all power is social, you are powerless till you move on this.

It’s interesting you talk about an Island as that is EXACTLY what I have been doing the last 10 years, a DIY boat life outside the norms and for the last 5 years outside the laws that affect everyday life. As you say, this is not a real alternative, but it can be a way of nurturing real alternatives… If people stop being #stupidindividualism for a moment to build change/challenge power, always only IF

Now that IF is the hard bit, keep it #KISS

Q. Living on the water may be a solution for some people. Especially in the Netherlands and other low areas, which are at risk of being wiped out by future sea rise.

A. aha am talking in metaphors living on a boat is replying to your island metaphor, to say done that, understand, need to do more 🙂

You need to talk to the metaphors otherwise this is little actual dialogue… humm this should be #KISS, and it is, I find it hard to understand why it is so hard?

Let’s try, the boat is picking up your point about “buy an island” am saying I bought an island and agree with you, then moving conversation on.

I also reply to your part about cults etc.

If you can understand Python i think you can understand some simple metaphors… am not going to insult you by suggesting how you can do this your bright anufe to work it out IF you try, notice the capitals that echoes back to a few paragraphs up.

ideas to work with

#stupidindividualism a full ideology with the last 40 years of #neoliberalism and a part of the liberal 20th century consensus. So it’s a strong #BLOCK

Some ideas:

* Every day, naming of the current “common sense” as worshipping the #deathcult is both true and useful in making #mainstreming uncomfortable.

* The pushing of simple #KISS ideas like #openweb vs #closedweb and as a POWERFUL way to JUDGE and compost #techcrap to mediate the #techchurn

* Group use of hashtags is the organizing tool.

The left mess we are in – the is a hole in my boat

There is an idea that on the “fluffy” left, we must be “nice” to get people involved in social change/challenge. There is an idea in the “spiky” left that we need to be nasty to be affective in social change/challenge.

Both are TRUE, it’s the balance that is important.

What is a CLEAR left fail is spending too much time fighting inside the left over this balance.

#BLOCKING #stupidindividualism and worshipping the #deathcult all push this fight, please don’t be a PRAT on this subject.

The problem:

The nice moral majority, our liberal friends, is that they still have not excepted that the system they try to PUSH is broken. It’s pastime for change so holding onto our current system is NOT helping, their “common sense” is the problem we need to be fighting as well as the far right.

United we stand, divided we fall – we are falling

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.

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

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

An example of the #geekproblem

An example of the #geekproblem

Everything we do is built on “standards” though we do have a problem of the defining bodies.

Some people like building sandcastles, it is what you are doing if you just make shit up in tech.

Actually this is fantasy as ANYTHING you are already building is already on top of a whole pile of standards.

I think people are expressing tribalism and not talking tech in practical sense at all.

What do you think?

#openweb #4opens

“open industrial standards” nebulous and problematic things, but everything in tech is built on top of a pile of them, It’s where the value is.

Nationalism is a nablus thing as well, and its where the violence is.

Tribalism can be beautiful, it can also be a problem.

Some #dotcons are bigger than nations, so maybe it’s a good metaphor?

The geek “problem” is a 20th century dysfunctional part of a tribe that is damaging to us all, think #climatechaos think #failbook think #diaspora

Talking about real issues I have been fighting for 20 years… The #stupidindividualism that treats this as personal is what am sadly talking about much of the time.

Yes, it becomes a boring circle, but it’s always about the importance of the #geekproblem as a block on the change/challenge that we need #XR

I wrote this in 2005 what has changed:

“Its going slow but we are getting there… One of the main problems seams to be a dysfunctional idea of a division of labour – ie. Every one seams to think I should do everything – as I am pretty useless at many things its no wonder it is going so slow… If you wona see something miracles happen you gota wave year arms around a bit and mutter some arcane words… Go on you can do something… Just look at the blog page to see what”

Http://HamishCampbell.com

This view is not arrogance, I should know, having worked at the heart of this mess for 30 years.

With the growing influx of #EU funding into the #openweb we will see an increase in #techchurn due to the #geekproblem being feed by #mainstreaming #stupidindividualism of most of the #fashernista who can jump through the bureaucracy gatekeeper hoops.

Hoping for a balance of good Vs damage, though the shear blinded arrogance of the vertical crew push us to the damage side. #NGI do not won’t to see this problem, we as a community need to push back on this for a better outcome

ome examples from a resent #EU #NGI meeting

Example, a horizontal public BBB meeting where the organizers are the only one who have access to the share notepad space. Note in BBB this is open by default, so a moderator closed it on the assumption that this was the right thing to do.

The result, all the public input is lost in the transitory chat.

Let’s look at a second example from the same meeting, the chare (who is likely lovely in person) took notes that were ONLY her agenda, ignoring the meeting input. Yes, I was non-directly rood about this. She was confused and started to try and take the agenda of the meeting badly.

Q. Should we have been silent and let her agenda and a few other #mainstreaming people been the only thing recorded in the minutes, thus the next round of funding?

A. we need to compost this crap, not add to it. Most time people do not STOP this crap process, we need to do this more.

As it said on the side of my blog for the last 10 years:

“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”

Orgs such as #NGIzero are unwitting feeding the “geek side there is naivety and over complexity” where the #mainstreaming #NGI are pushing the political side “arrogance and ignorance”

As I have been at the heart of this garden for more than 30 years, I think I have a better voice on this than most. That’s not arrogance, that’s truth 🙂

If you feel like talking shit please read this first en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_homin

I think the #EU guys find it hard to see how low our apion of the #mainstreaming mess they work in. The #EU people at these events are clearly incompetent on the subject of #openweb (and meany argue life on the planet in general) we all understand this in the grassroots.

If you wonder why grassroots people see the #mainstreaming as children. An example, due to the crap behaver of voting for piss poor politics, we have this boat land to look forward to. To call #mainstreaming incompetent is a clear understatement of the issue, talking to the wide #ngi project here.

We should talk about this survey https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki/Funding-of-openweb-projects and some of the more scary issues it brining up:

NONE WOULD DO FEEDBACK IN PUBLIC, this is important. The #EU funding has some “terrorism” in the cliques that run it, as people are actually afread that they will lose their livelihood if they speak out about these issues.

Me am “chaotic governance” so I ignore this, but you guys maybe need to take this onboard if you have not already.

A carrot and stick approach is a good path. I see @ngizero as the carrot and us the “community” as the stick. With this leverage, we can push harder for a better balance of good/damage from the funding influx to the #openweb from the #EU

Good to remember here, I am seeing @NGIZero as the solution and not as the problem in what am talking about #NGI

In the end, my difficulty is that I see the #openweb funding from the #EU being pushed by a “childish” point of view that is hard to respect and that it’s likely to do more damage than good, this we need to fix somehow, if anybody wants to help with child care.

Some things to think about:

It’s interesting how the truly aporling behaver of vertical minded people is excused by power (majority vertical) when they act in easy to understand crap ways in horizontal situations. And on the other hand, how the horizontal people are vilified at every point often for simply pointing out how bad the vertical behaver is. We need to look at crap behaver in vertical organizers, as they often do not see themselves shiting over the preceding. Though this act comes ever so naturally to them.

You can see this with the suffrages, the hunger marches, the Spanish Civil War, the Greenham women, the miner’s strike, corbinisam and just about anywhere you look where the two groups meet.

It’s crap that we keep letting this happen, take note I have near zero tolerances for this!

Positive projects for a better outcome:

* One practical idea is that we do need “chaotic governance” to have a voice unite.openworlds.info/Open-Med

* Better focus on social tech https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens/wiki

And more…