#FOSS and open source is always political. Let’s say that out loud, because it’s easy to forget. The very idea of open collaboration, of sharing code, ideas, and stories freely, was never a neutral stance. It was, and remains, a radical act of refusal. Refusal to privatize creativity. Refusal to turn cooperation into competition. Refusal to let the #deathcult of neoliberalism define what freedom means.

From the early days of free software and the #4opens, to the #openweb and #Indymedia, […]

The old #mainstreaming was only in a limited way about freedom, we now need to focus on what it was about, equality in obedience. Equality in our blinded worship of the #deathcult: growth, consumption, competition, endless mess on a dying planet.

That’s why #fashernista liberal progressivism is always a dead end problem, it plays radical, says radical, but composts nothing. At best, it sells rebellion as a lifestyle. It’s equality inside the system, not about freedom from it.

We’ve […]

The old #mainstreaming was only in a limited way about freedom, we now need to focus on what it was about, equality in obedience. Equality in our blinded worship of the #deathcult: growth, consumption, competition, endless mess on a dying planet.

That’s why #fashernista liberal progressivism is always a dead end problem, it plays radical, says radical, but composts nothing. At best, it sells rebellion as a lifestyle. It’s equality inside the system, not about freedom from it.

We’ve […]

#FOSS and open source is always political. Let’s say that out loud, because it’s easy to forget. The very idea of open collaboration, of sharing code, ideas, and stories freely, was never a neutral stance. It was, and remains, a radical act of refusal. Refusal to privatize creativity. Refusal to turn cooperation into competition. Refusal to let the #deathcult of neoliberalism define what freedom means.

From the early days of free software and the #4opens, to the #openweb and #Indymedia, […]

A post inspired by rereading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed as a part of the utopia reading group in #Oxford. This book is useful for the students jumping to the next stage of their lives. There’s a moment - often at the end of the teens when people face a choice. To be like everybody else for the rest of their lives, or to make a virtue of their peculiarities.

Most people choose the easy path: they find a nice, safe hierarchy and settle in. They obey the rules, repeat […]

A post inspired by rereading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed as a part of the utopia reading group in #Oxford. This book is useful for the students jumping to the next stage of their lives. There’s a moment - often at the end of the teens when people face a choice. To be like everybody else for the rest of their lives, or to make a virtue of their peculiarities.

Most people choose the easy path: they find a nice, safe hierarchy and settle in. They obey the rules, repeat […]

Over the last ten years, we’ve all been spending more and more time on #YouTube. And maybe you’ve noticed something strange: many of the channels you once thought of as independent are no longer independent at all. They’ve been quietly bought up by private equity firms with billions in backing from SoftBank, Amazon, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone - the usual #mainstreaming priests of the #deathcult.

Channels like Task & Purpose, Vice, Veritasium, Donut Media, Simple History, […]

Over the last ten years, we’ve all been spending more and more time on #YouTube. And maybe you’ve noticed something strange: many of the channels you once thought of as independent are no longer independent at all. They’ve been quietly bought up by private equity firms with billions in backing from SoftBank, Amazon, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone - the usual #mainstreaming priests of the #deathcult.

Channels like Task & Purpose, Vice, Veritasium, Donut Media, Simple History, […]

Hamish Campbell on the #openweb and rebooting indymedia

Hamish Campbell, a veteran of radical media for more than 30 years, argues that mainstream technology and culture are failing us. The rise of the #dotcon platforms has commodified our lives: closed silos like #Facebook and #Instagram harvest our attention and data, locking us into systems that serve profit, not people.

Attempts to build alternatives around an #encryptionist agenda have gone nowhere. As a result, the tech giants […]

It’s good to see more people turning their focus back to the #openweb. For the past five years of the #reboot we’ve been distracted in a signal-to-noise mess from the #fashionistas. That time needs to be over, we need to start looking clearly at both internal rot and the external threats.

A good first step is in balancing the realisation that we actually have far more direct power to deal with the internal mess than we do over the eternal #dotcons and their #closedweb “common sense”. […]

It’s good to see more people turning their focus back to the #openweb. For the past five years of the #reboot we’ve been distracted in a signal-to-noise mess from the #fashionistas. That time needs to be over, we need to start looking clearly at both internal rot and the external threats.

A good first step is in balancing the realisation that we actually have far more direct power to deal with the internal mess than we do over the eternal #dotcons and their #closedweb “common sense”. […]