I created this account back when Mastodon launched as a potential micro-blogging lifeboat, and now it looks like we might need one.
I am not anti-Musk by any means. I think he has achieved incredible things that are net positives for the world, but wrestling Twitter with a head full off Trump-adjacent idea wasps could be his Waterloo, so ...
(1/7)
I have a long-term interest in how #networks and the potential #collectiveintelligence of the internet can be used to humanise and improve collective action and the way we work together.
It sounds almost naive to say it now, but before the adtech industry turned social networks into monstrous tools of manipulation, there was a vibrant and kind world of blogs and tweets that could have been something very different.
(2/7)
In my work, I help companies use the affordances of digital tech to humanise, connect & scale their work systems, and I do this because we need institutions fit for the C21st that are more resistant to bad actors.
Our connected world cannot be governed or managed by vertically divided hierarchies; we need laterally connected networks & #platforms, especially at a time when we cannot rely on leaders to do the right thing. Rug pulls and other manipulations are not just a crypto disease.
(3/7)
I do executive education with international firms, transformation projects and advisory work, and I am also building tools that I hope will help teams take more control of their own organisational operating systems (#OrgOS as tech, ways of working, capabilities, connected structures and cultures, etc).
(4/7)
Let's be honest, Twitter was pretty awful pre-Musk. I mostly used it as a real-time Ukraine war news service.
I'm an IR nerd / hopeless infovore, plus I had a previous life as part of Bosnia's anti-fascist struggle in the 1990's, so Twitter has been an amazing resource for tracking & mapping the fight-back in detail. So many #Ukraine - #Bosnia parallels - like watching a replay where instead of an arms embargo + pressure to capitulate to genocide, we got HIMARS instead (Слава Україні !)
(5/7)
As a a man, I have not suffered much abuse on the hellsite, so my experience is not typical. Even my one viral thread (tweeted in anger during the UK Brexit collapse) was not so bad: https://twitter.com/leebryant/status/1063482269392867328
(I should add we got out of dodge soon after & now carry the guilty secret that Brexit ultimately changed our lives for the better. Sad feels for the UK, but I'm sure its creative urban populace will build something interesting after they have eaten the last morally vacuous Tory ;-)
(6/7)
“Sometimes I unplug my brainstem from the non-stop crisis liveblog that has become our life in the UK and become briefly conscious of how the media, especially the BBC, has failed us on Brexit in a way that reminds me just a little bit of the collapse of Yugoslavia. (1/20)”
Will I use Mastodon much? Depends how it develops, I guess, but I am up for smaller scale networking without the influencers and the monetization for sure, and so I hope it finds a place in the world. Let's see. But for now: hello world 👋 🙌 ❤️
(7/7)
Lee Bryant
Ton Zijlstra
Alexander Kluge
Julian Elve
Lukas Fütterer
Toke