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/

This message is a shovel

Ten years ago - and honestly long before that - there were endless conversations on #failbook about how useful it was for campaigning. The dominant view back then was simple: it’s just cat memes, it's just tooling, it isn’t political so we can use it harmlessly. Before Snowden, this wasn’t a fringe view - it was probably a 90% consensus, especially among activists, and #fashionista tech communities. I’m not pointing fingers here, as this was normal. Many of us - including friends and […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/this-message-is-a-spade/

The uncomfortable path

The individual, their freedom, and their capacity for reason are products of social relationships, not independent origins. Society is not built from isolated individuals; individuals arise from shared culture, history, and collective life. As society grows richer and more humane, individuals gain the conditions needed for deeper development and freedom emerges from this shared foundation. What’s really at stake is power. The shift has to be away from private ownership and toward the […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-uncomfortable-truth/

We use hashtags as scaffolding for the needed social truth, not as slogans, but as scaffolding, lightweight markers that point to recurring structural issues: #geekproblem #fashernista #dotcons #blocking are not insults. They are shorthand for patterns that otherwise take pages to explain. But, without shared context, they are still easily misread as personal attacks. Again we face #blocking.

From personal mess to shared paths, #OMN in the post-truth world

Consensus matters - but it’s so hard - collective projects, media, activism and infrastructure require a minimum level of agreement about what the problem is. Not total agreement, but enough shared reality to coordinate sustainable action. Without some form of shared external social truth, progressive projects do not move at all, this is not always because people are malicious, but more often because they are no longer standing on any shared ground. This mess, is a problem, as it means […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/from-personal-mess-to-shared-paths-omn-in-the-post-truth-world/

We fucked up… and that matters because we still have agency

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: we fucked up the last 20 years of #openweb tech. Not “they” fucked it up. Not only #BigTech, not only venture capital, not only governments and surveillance states. We did, especially those of us who were closest to the tools, the protocols, the decisions - the geeks, developers, architects, and maintainers who shaped how this stuff actually worked in practice. That matters, because it means we still have direct power over what happens next. […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/we-fucked-up-and-that-matters-because-we-still-have-agency/

Progressive Mainstreaming

Most progressive #mainstreaming isn’t about ending the #deathcult - it’s about making its worship feel more fair, more inclusive, more polite. There is some real everyday value in this. Fewer people get crushed immediately, some suffering is reduced, that matters. But let’s be honest about what it does not do, it does not get people off their knees to challenge the altar to stop the sacrifice. It rearranges the seating in the temple, feeding the deeper problem, obedience. Progressive […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/progressive-mainstreaming/

Building, what comes next?

#mainstreaming people are wilfully blind and alt people tend to be pessimistic, it's a problem. Historically, real social change doesn’t arrive by waiting for collapse. It arrives because people are active, they build alternatives in advance, strong enough to bridge the mess when existing systems fail and lose legitimacy. This isn’t theory. It’s how change has always happened. If you are interested in a better outcome, we need to remember, build first, collapse later is the lesson that […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/building-what-comes-next/

Normal is walking around in a toxic story and calling this common sense

Forty years of hard indoctrination doesn’t just fade away. It has to be dug up, held in our hands, recognised for what it is, and composted. If we don’t do this, we have no hope - none - of moving away from the accelerating mess that’s already killing millions and is on track to kill billions. Hobbes’ “nasty, brutish and short” isn’t a warning any more; it’s a weather report. Mainstream thinking feels normal because we’ve lived inside it for a generation and a half. But […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/normal-is-the-mess-of-walking-around-in-a-toxic-story-and-calling-this-common-sense/

Why the #OMN works with #ActivityPub – And why we need a bridge to #p2p

Let's look at this. #ActivityPub is not a product. It’s not even really a “protocol” in the narrow, rigid sense that vertical tech likes to imagine. ActivityPub is a shared vocabulary, a public language for moving meaning and connection across the #openweb. It gives you nouns and verbs, and the community defines the grammar through lived use. This is why the #OMN works with ActivityPub, a metadata and meaning layer, not a platform, flows, not silos. ActivityPub is the widely deployed […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-the-omn-works-with-activitypub-and-why-we-need-a-bridge-to-p2p/