Thinking of workshops to run at “Nodes On A Web” #NOAW unconference

Hamish Campbell is a long-time #openweb activist and technologist working on grassroots media and digital commons. He was involved in the early development of #Indymedia and continues this work through projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN), which works on how federated tools and community publishing supports public-interest media infrastructure. His focus is balancing building native platforms and on growing the social culture that makes the #openweb work: transparency, […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/thinking-of-workshops-to-run-at-nodes-on-a-web-noaw-unconference/

A Note to #FOSS Maintainers and Funders: The Problem With #Mainstreaming https://hamishcampbell.com/a-note-to-foss-maintainers-and-funders-the-problem-with-mainstreaming/ the future of the #openweb will not be decided by technology alone. It will be decided by culture, governance, and resource flows.

A Note to #FOSS Maintainers and Funders: The Problem With #Mainstreaming

There is a point that often gets misunderstood in conversations about the future of the #openweb and #FOSS that #mainstreaming itself is not inherently good or bad. What matters is who is influencing whom. We can think of it in two very different directions. Good #mainstreaming is when the values of the #openweb move outward into the wider world: Transparency, decentralization, cooperation, shared infrastructure and community governance. In this case, mainstream society learns from the […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/a-note-to-foss-maintainers-and-funders-the-problem-with-mainstreaming/

Disciplined curiosity beats IQ, Oxford

There is a persistent myth pushed in our culture that intelligence - high IQ, academic credentials, elitist education - leads naturally to clear thinking. My organic experience suggests the opposite, what matters is disciplined, skeptical, freethinking curiosity. Without that, intelligence simply becomes a tool for defending whatever assumptions people already hold. This is one of the reasons many academic environments produce people who are, bluntly, credulous. Not because they lack […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/disciplined-curiosity-beats-iq-oxford/

Shovels, Hashtags, and Revolutions: Roots of the #openweb

It’s obvious to everyone paying attention that the relentless push of #mainstreaming over the last forty years has not made society healthier or more stable. Quite the opposite, the result has been accelerating social disintegration and the rapid expansion of #climatechaos. When the current trajectory continues, the consequences are catastrophic. Over the next fifty years we are looking at millions dead and billions displaced by climate breakdown, ecological collapse, and the political […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/shovels-hashtags-and-revolutions-digging-up-the-roots-of-the-openweb/

What projects like #OMN can learn from history

The lesson from the Leonid Brezhnev era of the Soviet Union is simple but brutal that stability is not strength. From the outside the system looked powerful - armies, rockets, space stations. But internally it had stopped being able to correct itself, criticism became dangerous, information was distorted, and the leadership focused on maintaining control rather than fixing problems. The result was a long, slow decay that only became obvious once collapse was already underway. For projects […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/what-projects-like-omn-can-learn-from-history/

*This is the sign of a functional social order. #academia #research #mainstreaming #technology *When the take-havers pioneer it all, and the scholars are the ones that catch on ten years later, that would be pop music

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jtzxnbwxwbywld23yvnyokzf/post/3mg2db7jzjs2v

Policy churn, selective memory, and the mess on repeat

There’s a familiar pattern in foreign policy debates: outrage at the current regime, amnesia about how it got there. Yes, the current government of #Iran is repressive. It crushes dissent, restricts freedoms, and enforces authoritarian rule. None of that needs soft-pedalling, but if we’re at all serious about understanding the world - rather than just reacting to #fashernista headlines - we also have to look at how situation came to be. In 1953, the democratically elected Prime Minister […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/policy-churn-selective-memory-and-the-mess-on-repeat/

Public Money, Private Hype: From Blockchain to AI – and the #FOSS Path Less Taken

In tech funding, over the last decade, the #EU poured hundreds of millions of euros into the #blockchain mess. The promise has proven to be illusion, we built no working transformation: trustless systems, frictionless governance or new economic layers for Europe. The reality? By any honest social metric, 99.9% of that public funding was poured straight down the drain. Now we are lining up to do the same with AI. Another wave of hundreds of millions, based on another cycle of hype, feeding […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/public-money-private-hype-from-blockchain-to-ai-and-the-foss-path-less-taken/

Why good faith is a technical requirement for #FOSS

If you’ve spent years in #FOSS, you’ve likely developed a strong allergy to vague political language. You care about licenses, reproducibility, governance models, and whether something actually runs. Good. That discipline is why free software exists at all. But here’s the uncomfortable question, what if the biggest blocker to the #openweb right now isn’t technical debt - but social debt? And what if “good faith” is not a moral nicety, but a core infrastructure requirement? The […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-good-faith-is-a-technical-requirement-for-foss/