The answer isn’t to work harder. It’s to work differently. The #OMN is a path to do that by stopping repeating the same mistakes by compost the failures of the last forty years, and rebuild the #openweb on social foundations that people can actually live with. If we can’t make this shift, we’ll simply keep rebuilding the same broken systems with newer code.
One of our mistakes is treating every #fashionista project as if it were native #openweb.
Too often, grassroots ideas are picked up, systematised, and reshaped into something acceptable to #mainstreaming institutions. The tools may remain "open", but the social process and governance shift.
The #Fediverse shows both sides of this. It has revived the #openweb, but it also carries the assumptions of the wider culture. Without care, we reproduce the same hierarchies, gatekeeping, and #geekproblem we were trying to escape.
The answer isn't rejection, it's composting, use the #4opens to ask simple questions: Is the data open? Is the code open? Are the standards open? Most importantly, is the process open?
If not, we're probably looking at another layer of #mainstreaming rather than genuine commons. Let's balance the repeating inherited agendas and start building native grassroots alternatives please.
#OMN #OGB #indymediaback #KISS #DIY #Fediverse
The #Fediverse is an accidental reboot of the #openweb, it wasn’t designed from the top down, it emerged because thousands of people built alternatives to the #dotcons. That’s its greatest strength, it’s also why it’s so messy.
When people recognise the problem, ask them what the solution is. Most will instinctively reach for the same #neoliberal "common sense" that created the crisis. That's the moment to gently point out that those ideas are part of the #deathcult, not a way out. Why #FOSS matters socially https://hamishcampbell.com/why-foss-matters-socially/
It's a story about Ducks, Nazis and the people we become. Which Nature Are We Growing? https://hamishcampbell.com/which-nature-are-we-growing/
#Oxfordboaters #commons #nature
The question is not whether #commons will exist, it is whether we will learn fast enough to stop repeating the same failures in every new form. #Oxfordboaters every day commons https://hamishcampbell.com/oxford-boaters-every-day-commons/
The future is not decided by whether we use #AI, it is decided by whether we allow the same old #dotcons logic to shape every new technology. Technology is never just a tool https://hamishcampbell.com/technology-is-never-just-a-tool/
This isn’t nostalgia for a utopian view of the past, it’s the urgently needed #KISS survival. - Manifesto for the Hashtag Commons https://hamishcampbell.com/manifesto-for-the-hashtag-commons/
#AI is not an existential threat to the #openweb, it’s an asshole amplifier inside an already broken system. AI didn’t break the web. The #dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume https://hamishcampbell.com/ai-didnt-break-the-web-the-dotcons-did-ai-just-turned-up-the-volume/
There have been a lot of institutional prat moves on the #Fediverse over the last few years, the Fediverse’s growing signal-to-noise problem – and who’s causing it https://hamishcampbell.com/the-real-debate-isnt-institutions-versus-communities/
#AI is not an existential threat to the #openweb, it’s an asshole amplifier inside an already broken system. AI didn’t break the web. The #dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume https://hamishcampbell.com/ai-didnt-break-the-web-the-dotcons-did-ai-just-turned-up-the-volume/
#AI is not an existential threat to the #openweb, it’s an asshole amplifier inside an already broken system. AI didn’t break the web. The #dotcons did – AI just turned up the volume https://hamishcampbell.com/ai-didnt-break-the-web-the-dotcons-did-ai-just-turned-up-the-volume/
But when you look at where the money and attention actually go, a different picture emerges. The plan allocates vast resources to semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, AI, and data centres. Open source gets a much smaller slice of the pie, and native #openweb like the #Fediverse barely registers at all. The one notable mention is support for decentralised social media, highlighted through the Commission’s continued use of Mastodon. (Digital Strategy)
OMN history note: #Failbook, activism, and the enclosure of organising https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-history-note-failbook-activism-and-the-enclosure-of-organising/ The lesson is simple, even if uncomfortable – if you organise inside systems designed to fragment you, you should expect fragmentation.
Churning of pointless tech projects https://hamishcampbell.com/churning-of-pointless-tech-projects/ The #OMN is one attempt at this – a shovel for composting the inhuman mess, so something living can grow from it.
The real difference between “closed” and “open” systems is mostly about where power sits inside this stack. Shifting power in #openweb projects https://hamishcampbell.com/shifting-power-in-openweb-projects/
Turning stress, conflict, and exhaustion into commons culture instead of mutual destruction https://hamishcampbell.com/turning-stress-conflict-and-exhaustion-into-commons-culture-instead-of-mutual-destruction/ Hard fight ahead, but people before us already showed that these waterways and our #openweb culture are worth defending.
It’s past time to compost this “common sense” and grow something better. Criticisms of capitalism and its digital children, the #dotcons https://hamishcampbell.com/criticisms-of-capitalism-and-its-digital-children-the-dotcons-2/