Rebuilding Journalism as Commons (not a product)

It should be obvious that we need a path back to good journalism - journalism that sheds light on facts, connects the dots, and lets people trace those dots back to sources. This is what allows us to share, question, and discuss within our own trusted communities, and then spread that knowledge outward through federation, always linking back to the source. Right now, the #mainstreaming path is broken. It’s sometimes hard for people to see this because the decline has been slow, a gradual […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/rebuilding-journalism-as-commons-not-a-product/

Gates vs Bridges: the obscure politics of the #geekproblem

In the #geekproblem mindset, crossing a protocol flow is a gateway were in #openweb terms, it’s a bridge. That difference is not technical - it’s social - the difference between CONTROL and TRUST. A gate is something you lock, permission, authentication, enforcement were a bridge is something you cross, connection, flow, relationship. In the physical world, we don’t put gates on bridges as a default, but in software, we keep rebuilding them, and then wondering why things fragment. RSS […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/gates-vs-bridges-the-obscure-politics-of-the-geekproblem/

The value of the #Fediverse comes from its cultural roots in the #openweb

YOU can’t do social change or challenge without annoying people If you think you can, you’re probably play-acting - and part of the problem - does that annoy you? If it does… maybe sit with that. 🙂 Food for thought, #4opens is a shovel for composting. The value of the #Fediverse comes from its cultural roots in the #openweb. The tech - like ActivityPub - grew out of that culture. It wasn’t built by #mainstreaming interests. Now money is flowing in, and with it comes risk of […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-value-of-the-fediverse-comes-from-its-cultural-roots-in-the-openweb/

What We Can Learn from Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders

In #mainstreaming and alt political cultures there’s a constant call in messy times for “strong leaders” to cut through the chaos, but this is the wrong path. What Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders actually show is something more uncomfortable and more useful that real change doesn’t come from strong individuals - it comes from movements we don’t fully control. They were signals, not saviours. Both figures emerged on the left because something deeper was already shifting with […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/what-we-can-learn-from-jeremy-corbyn-and-bernie-sanders/

The Digital Commons: The Ground We Already Stand On

At #NOAW event I talked a lot about the digital commons so thought it might be useful to write a post grounding this. The digital commons are not a future vision, it’s something we already have. At its simplest, the digital commons are the widely used #4opens digital resources of software, knowledge, data, and culture created collectively, governed by communities, and made available for public (re)use. This is the native path of the #openweb it's been around for a long time, it might be […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-digital-commons-the-ground-we-already-stand-on/

Proposal – from #NOAW

This is the open-source - split – FOSS moment for the Fediverse. We’ve seen this before. When “open source” was carved out of Free Software politics, it made the space more business-friendly - but at a cost, the movement never fully recovered from this. The result was a long-term weakening of the social and political grounding that made FOSS meaningful in the first place. We are in real danger of repeating this pattern in the Fediverse. Vertical agendas - loud, well-funded, and […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/proposal-from-noaw/

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/