Trust, encryption, and the risk of “trustless” thinking https://hamishcampbell.com/trust-encryption-and-the-risk-of-trustless-thinking/ The #encryptionist movement has a blind spot.

Trust, encryption, and the risk of “trustless” thinking

The #encryptionist movement has a blind spot. Not because encryption itself is bad - it isn’t. Encryption is a tool to protect dissidents, journalists, communities under threat, and everyday privacy. In the small picture, strong encryption is often necessary. But in the bigger picture, something more subtle is happening. Strands of crypto and decentralisation culture promote the idea of removing trust - replacing social relationships with mathematical guarantees, “trustless systems,” […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/trust-encryption-and-the-risk-of-trustless-thinking/

What Did We Learn from Web3, Crypto?

Looking back from the mid-2020s, the arc of #web03, #NFTs, and blockchain culture is very clear. What once promised (lied about) decentralisation, liberation, and a break from corporate capture now looks like the same, mess, #techcurn pattern repeating itself, yes it had new language, new branding, but it was easy to see it had the same underlying mess making dynamics. As these #geekproblem projects hollowed out, the signs became hard to ignore. The technical optimism faded, the user bases […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/what-did-we-learn-a-history-of-web3-crypto/

Talking about grassroots media as a step away from the current #techshit

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 […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/talking-about-grassroots-media-as-a-step-away-from-the-current-techshit/

Building Alt/Grassroots Media Networks to Challenge and Widen Traditional Media

The current ecosystem of alternative and grassroots media is too narrow in its imagination of what media could, and should, be. There’s a persistent naivety or, in some cases, a self-serving dishonesty. Many of the most “successful” progressive media groups continue to mimic #traditionalmedia without understanding, or addressing, the fact that they do not control their distribution. In effect, they’re renting space in someone else’s empire.

This is not just a mistake. It’s the […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/building-alt-grassroots-media-networks-to-challenge-and-widen-traditional-media/

Challenging “liberal trolls” and #encryptionist blindness hamishcampbell.com/challenging-... the path of the #openweb depends on striking a balance between openness and security, grassroots experimentation and mainstream scalability, and decentralization and coordination.

Challenging “liberal trolls” a...

Challenging “liberal trolls” and #encryptionist blindness https://hamishcampbell.com/challenging-liberal-trolls-encryptionist-blindness-for-the-broader-openweb/ the path of the #openweb depends on striking a balance between openness and security, grassroots experimentation and mainstream scalability, and decentralization and coordination.

Tech governance projects miss the mark, its pastime to compost the mess

Tech governance projects keep missing the mark because they refuse to engage with the real, lived experiences of grassroots activists and community builders. Instead of listening, they fall back into the comfort zones of the #geekproblem: control over collaboration, certainty over-curiosity, code over community. This is further compounded by the “professional” #NGO class of detached, branding-obsessed, and career-driven #mainstreaming. They claim to serve communities but remain […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/tech-governance-projects-miss-the-mark-its-pastime-to-compost-the-mess/

In tech, what matters and what is dangerous

The influx of #mainstreaming brings many non-native, focuses into our growing shared alt spaces. When we embed content, most of these will be better handled as external resources. Let’s keep the core simple: #KISS and #4opens. One of the strongest of these is money, it is a dangerous subject for #openweb projects. It’s way too often the root of corruption and co-option, so it’s best to keep financial aspects as external applications and simply link to them. And remember that words are […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/what-matters-and-what-is-dangerous/