#OMN (Open Media Network)2d ago

Thatcher, Reagan were the wrecking crew: How we keep pushing mess

This story is about the ideology that won. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two politicians on either side of the Atlantic didn’t only win elections, they reshaped what people came to accept as “common sense.” Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States did not invent capitalism’s worst tendencies, but they gave them state power, institutional infrastructure, and ideological legitimacy. What they built was not simply a set of policies, it was a social […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/thatcher-reagan-were-the-wrecking-crew-how-we-pushed-the-current-mess/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Apr 27

#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story)

#techchurn is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies - not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress. It burns community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy, while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures untouched.https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn The #OMN uses #stupidindividualism to describe the culturally manufactured habit of prioritising personal gain and self-interest over collective […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/omn-grounding-the-roots-as-a-story/

#OMN Grounding (the roots as a story) – #OMN (Open Media Network)

witchescauldronApr 27

#techchurn is the endless cycle of adopting new platforms, tools, and technologies - not because they solve any real problems, but because novelty is mistaken for progress - burning community trust, institutional memory, and activist energy in the process while leaving the underlying #nastyfew power structures completely untouched.

https://hamishcampbell.com/?s=techchurn

#OMN (Open Media Network)Dec 28

There is such a thing as society -and the #openweb depends on it

There is such a thing as society. The entire #openweb is built on that assumption 🙂Deny it, and everything collapses into noise, power grabs, and enclosure. That denial, dressed up today as “post-truth” - is killing us. Our current media ecology is broken. So called #AI and Google are no longer a useful way to find information about most things that actually matter. This isn’t accidental; it’s a structural #dotcons problem. Extraction, advertising, and algorithmic manipulation […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/there-is-such-a-thing-as-society-and-the-openweb-depends-on-it/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Dec 25

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/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Dec 17

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/

witchescauldronDec 16
It’s pointless to build on complexity in a post-truth world powered by #techchurn and driven by #fashionista incentives. How fear blocks change https://hamishcampbell.com/the-fashionista-problem-how-fear-blocks-change/
The #Fashionista problem: How fear blocks change – #OMN (Open Media Network)

#OMN (Open Media Network)Dec 11

The #Fashionista problem: How fear blocks change

This story is about compost, not control: Our world is smeared in social shit. We live in a vast, stinking pile of it. The left has its post-modern shit - where truth dissolves into vibes and dreams. The right has its fascist shit - where truth is something you enforce with obedience and violence. We drink the seeping effluent from this dung heap. Our work, our shops, our politics, our tech... all of it is smeared in the same rot. The planet itself is decomposing under the weight of this […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/the-fashionista-problem-how-fear-blocks-change/

#OMN (Open Media Network)Jul 23, 2025

Talking About the #geekproblem in Funding

Funding the #openweb is a political act, yet most funding decisions today are framed in technical terms only, dominated by what we call the #geekproblem – a worldview where infrastructure is king, user needs are secondary, and social context is largely ignored.

Let’s unpack this with real-world examples and look at how we keep falling into this trap, and what we could do to climb out. The call-out for funding is phrased in social language, to build privacy-preserving tools, improve the […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/talking-about-the-geekproblem-in-funding-2/

Talking About the #geekproblem in Funding – Hamish Campbell

#OMN (Open Media Network)Jul 22, 2025

Why most #geekproblem software fails: Trust vs. control

Almost all of our #geekproblem software fails because it’s built with a mindset of control.

Control over users.Control over systems.Control over outcomes.

But all good societies, and all durable communities, are based on trust. When we ignore this, we don’t just write bad code, we produce #techshit that nobody uses, that burns out developers, and that confuses users. Then we start over… and call it “innovation.” That’s #techchurn.Control-driven projects: Examples of […]

https://hamishcampbell.com/why-most-geekproblem-software-fails-trust-vs-control/

Why most #geekproblem software fails: Trust vs. control – Hamish Campbell