Without discomfort, we won’t challenge the roots of the system we’re still living inside
A core problem we’ve inherited from the last ten years of corporate social media, the #dotcons, is the toxic confusion of the personal and the public. Platforms like #Facebook and #Twitter blurred the lines between private conversation and public broadcasting, monetizing both as if they were the same. That mess wasn’t accidental; it was profitable. Unfortunately, we’ve reproduced this mess on the #Fediverse without properly composting it first. What does that mean? We’ve taken this […]#TechShit
Our liberals talking about the death of #postmodernism
https://youtu.be/B_q1RemGq3E?si=JKovTWlAXwuSysrT From decades of real-world experience - especially in activism - I've found that self-professed #Postmodernists and Western #Buddhists have been some of the most useless and damaging people I've worked with. Not an exaggeration: I could probably count the genuinely good ones on one hand. This isn't bitterness. It’s about composting a mess that has rotted for too long. Important: This isn’t a call to lurch into the collapsing right-wing […]https://hamishcampbell.com/our-liberals-talking-about-the-death-of-postmodernism/
In tech, the last 20 years have been a mess of #fashernista trends and the ongoing #geekproblem, a compost heap of broken promises and abandoned projects. It's obvious if you lift the lid and really look. The glossy hype fades fast, the rot underneath remains.
Much of what we call "innovation" ended up as #techshit - rushed, bloated, short-sighted code that needs serious composting if we’re going to grow anything real. #Openweb dreams have been buried under a #dotcons landfill.
The real challenge now isn’t just pointing at the pile (fun as that can be), it's handing the next generation proper shovels - real tools, real critical thinking, real spaces for building rooted, resilient, open tech.
A hopeful note: some #fashernistas are starting to apologize and acknowledge the mess. That's good compost material too. Let's keep composting. Let's keep planting.
We stopped critiquing. We stopped questioning. We let the rot build up, hoping it would turn into something useful on its own. Instead, we got layers of #techshit, digital infrastructure that isolates instead of connects, surveillance wrapped in UX design, and a generation seduced by #stupidindividualism on the #dotcons. Tech became the default priesthood, and any challenge to its orthodoxy was treated as luddite heresy. Meanwhile, real mutual aid got rebranded as tip jars and GoFundMe links, stripped of its radical solidarity. We’ve been too afraid to call this out, too fragmented to organize, too polite to fight. Well, fuck polite. It's time to get messy.
Messy language feeds back into our culture
The #blocking of current action, the constant stalls, confusion, and fragmentation, has a lot to do with the mess our language makes. And the deeper issue is how this messy language feeds back into our culture, which then loops back to make the language even murkier. It’s a feedback loop that clouds meaning, erodes trust, and paralyses collective action. The last 40 years of postmodernism and neo-liberalism have made this worse. #Postmodernism chipped away at the idea of shared reality, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/messy-language-feeds-back-into-our-culture/
Finding a path in a messy world
Let’s get this out of the way, most new tech projects are pointless. That’s not an insult, it’s a cultural symptom. People are pushing things not because they’re useful, but because they can. And when every shovel is used to dig holes in sand, we’re not building anything, we’re flailing. From this experience, let’s build culture, not just code, because here's the hard truth, we’re losing the reboot of the #openweb by failing to nurture it. Yes, #mainstreaming people are […]The #OMN is not a product — It’s a path you walk
The #OMN project is #DIY, it only works if we build it together. This isn’t a startup pitch. It’s not a platform that magically appears out of nowhere to fix everything. It’s not a product to consume, it’s a path you walk. The direction is participatory, not passive. You don’t get to sit back and clap… or boo from the sidelines. If you do, the system won’t collapse, but it sure as hell won’t grow. Let’s be direct, there is no saviour coder, no NGO white knight, no […]https://hamishcampbell.com/the-omn-is-not-a-product-its-a-path-you-walk/
The #OMN project is #DIY, it only works if communities of people actually build it. This isn’t a path of passive consumption; it’s a participatory direction. If people choose to sit on their hands, or act the prat and critique from the sidelines, the system doesn’t collapse… but it doesn’t grow either.
That said, even if the building doesn’t happen right away, there’s still deep value in the memory, the documents, the ideas, the patterns. It’s compost for future builders. If we can’t get our act together now, the next group will dig it up, learn from it, and build better.
Right now, for me, #makinghistory archiving project is a still-doable foundation, a living memory layer that gives us something solid to stand on. Without memory, we spin in circles around the same old #techshit heap, repeating mistakes, retelling the same half-lost stories, and falling into the same traps. That’s not progress, it’s rot.
We’re now working on bootstrapping this archive project as the first step. If we don’t remember soon, many of us, and our histories, will be lost in the storm of #climatechaos. In the end, if we don’t build, we don’t change.
@rooftopjaxx @hamishcampbell @MediaActivist
Ah, the cockerel crows and the full moon glows, a fine moment to scratch at the compost pile.
You’re right, most are merrily skipping through walled gardens, hashtagging selfies and feeding the #dotcons. But seeds don’t need mass attention, they just do need rich compost. That’s what we need to build. Slow, damp, a bit smelly, but fertile.
The #sheeple and not my flock, they belong to the algorithmic shepherds. We’re feeding the stray goats and curious crows.
You don’t convert people by preaching. You do it by making better paths, ones they choose when the old ones crumble. We don’t sell the #openweb like snake oil — we show it, live in it, fix it when it breaks, and compost the crap. It’s #DIY, not #drm
As for silos and skips, good compost needs oxygen, not airtight boxes. So yeah, a messy open pile — full of half-rotten ideas, posts, drama, even the occasional troll turd.
We trust in tools not gatekeepers, the #4opens are the shovels, rakes, and sieves. The people bring the scraps, and over time, it breaks down into something usable.
No army of mods, no paywalls, simple trust, process, and a lot of patience. Think rural anarchism, not startup governance.
On scaling... Ah, the eternal #techshit question, "Does it scale?" That’s the wrong frame. Nature doesn’t scale, it sprawls.
We’re not building an empire. We’re nurturing a network. Think mycelium, not megastructure.
The #OMN isn’t about numbers. It’s about resilience and agency. If it sprouts in some cracks, the monoculture breaks. And yes, nettles welcome
The #Kolektivas, the #fashernista paradoxes, the semi-anarchic infighting, it all goes in the pile. Break it down, stir it up, give it time…
And what do you get? Fluffy, fertile humus — ready for new growth. That’s the cycle. That’s the plan.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/tech/news/european-industry-big-win-germany-france-both-support-sovereign-eu-based-tech-infrastructure/ Now we need clear thinking and process not to tern this into #fahernista #techshit, how not to simply poor the resources down the drain. One some part of this is affective grassroots atavism to compost the mess as it spreads from the centre, to feed the seedling that do sprout. https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=EU+funding
If we’re going to break out of this death spiral, we have to bypass the endemic #techshit. This is where activist-led projects like the #OMN come in—creating new spaces rooted in solidarity, shared stories, and collective action. The Need for Collective Action hamishcampbell.com/the-urgent-n...
The Urgent Need for Collective...
If we’re going to break out of this death spiral, we have to bypass the endemic #techshit. This is where activist-led projects like the #OMN come in—creating new spaces rooted in solidarity, shared stories, and collective action. The Urgent Need for Collective Action https://hamishcampbell.com/the-urgent-need-for-collective-action/
News, the signal-to-noise mess
Almost all our posting in the #openweb and in the #dotcons in response to #mainstreaming news is noise. It’s reactive, fragmented, performative. We scroll, we rage, we boost, we dunk, but we don’t build. Sometimes, someone posts something thoughtful, something deep, meaningful. But it vanishes in the churn. The system is designed this way. Even on our #openweb, where we have more autonomy, we are mirroring this spectacle path, feeding it attention, reposting its narratives, amplifying […]
Mainstreaming: Building Grassroots Balance
Our history of involvement in #EU digital outreach and policy meetings has made one thing starkly clear, our #openweb is deeply entangled in the process of #mainstreaming, a messy, often co-optive dynamic where grassroots voices are softened, diluted, and redirected into bureaucracy, then in the end they are simply #blocked. Yes, while there is value in taking part, it's also a wake-up call. The push to shape digital paths from above is strong. But without active grassroots alternatives, […]https://hamishcampbell.com/mainstreaming-building-grassroots-balance/
Be FOR Something, Not Against Everything hamishcampbell.com/be-for-somet... This isn’t only tech philosophy, it’s a practical shovel to compost the #techshit we’ve, suffocating buried under. Let’s build some bridges, not walls
Be FOR Something, Not Against ...
Be FOR Something, Not Against Everything https://hamishcampbell.com/be-for-something-not-just-against-everything/ This isn’t only tech philosophy, it’s a practical shovel to compost the #techshit we’ve, suffocating buried under. Let’s build some bridges, not walls
Struggling for a Real Alternative
For the last 5 years conversations have been about, the #Fediverse, #Web3 and more recently the pushing of #mainstreaming into the #openweb native path. But despite this, the #fediverse is still a notable outlier in the digital landscape. This is in part because unlike the dominant tech trends, which emerge from Silicon Valley and the cross-Atlantic #dotcons agenda, the #fediverse is rooted in European ideals of decentralization, federation, and digital autonomy, it's a "native" #openweb […]https://hamishcampbell.com/struggling-for-a-real-alternative/
#Techshit Hype – #NothingNew
The is nothing new to pointing out that our #fashionistas #mainstreaming crew push mess. Remember when drone deliveries were going to revolutionize shopping? When every major news outlet unthinkably reported that we’d have autonomous quadcopters dropping off toothpaste and Amazon boxes on our doorsteps? Or when 3D TVs were the future of entertainment, pushed so aggressively that manufacturers stopped making non-3D models for a while? Where are they now? Rotting covered in dust in […]YOU can’t do social change without annoying people. We need to stop chasing distractions and focus on real accountability. Composting the #TechShit hamishcampbell.com/composting-t...
Composting the #TechShit – Ham...
YOU can’t do social change without annoying people. We need to stop chasing distractions and focus on real accountability. Composting the #TechShit https://hamishcampbell.com/composting-the-techshit/
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