OMN

What works in Activist video?

2013-05-22T19:30:20Z

Made 2 films with nearly a million views each on youtube, in both cases they are "successful" because people are hating on them.

More than thirty climate activists and local residents took mass direct action to prevent excavation work on Britain's biggest ever open-cast coal mine at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales.

Many people are learning to live sustainably, without money. In this video, they discuss their struggles, how they got to and developed kew bridge eco-village.

Parasitic traditional media

2013-05-21T13:23:05Z

Its interesting how parasitic traditional media is, an idea or a news story will come out in a sub-culture (contemporary media) weeks or years before it becomes a “story” in traditional media. This time lag – together with the general lack of connection in traditional media to where story’s come from/break is noticeably dysfunctional in our new connected world.

This parasitical behaver will continue in-till we solve these issues in contemporary media:

* financial support for the production of grassroots per-per media – something like flattr is an example of an attempt to solve this problem.

* Ethical norms of linking and aggregation in per-per production need to solidify and be coded into contemporary media projects. An example of this would be the OMN project.

* a general discrediting of traditional media as a reliable source of information – shifting peoples behaver of linking away by providing better working contemporary media projects. An example of this would be the http://visionon.tv project.

The current connections between contemporary and traditional media are largly broken, do we try and fix it or not is the relevant question? Do we actually need these old gate keeping institutions and if we do, are they flexible and lean anufe to survive anyway? I think diversity of strategy’s are probably helpful here.

Working on the boat - insulation

2013-05-19T16:05:11Z

Insulation is importent for comfort and to stop rot/rust issues with condensation on boats.

http://www.spray-insulation.co.uk/Measuring.htm

http://www.sprayfoaminsulation.co.uk/services/marine-boat-insulation

The will have an added effect of absorbing/dampening engine noise - as I have herd that the lifeboats can be very noisy. Its going to be expensive - around £500 http://www.foamseal.co.uk/diy-spray-foam/index.php?cPath=3800006 but can leave this till the end of the summer.

Lifeboat to liveaboard conversion

2013-05-22T17:18:38Z

Am thinking about getting one of these to covert into a live-in open media centre. They vary from 7-9m in length and have seating (like sardines) for 30-60 people.

Proposed mission would be to:
* remove most of the seats to open the space up
* paint it so it wasnt bright orange (need a good weeks dry weather to
do this)
* put in some very basic live in space, bed, table etc.
* fit some basic solar panels, batterys etc.
* steam punk it up a bit.

This would be done wombling style if anyone wont's to help.

They are fresh off oil rigs so should be in working condition with all survival gear in them. It seams that one of the reasons the is a lot of surplus lifeboats is that oil rig workers are getting fat (PDF) so the current lifeboats aren't large anufe.

Am going up to Scotland to have a look (and maybe buy) end of the week, then put it on the river lee/canal to do the rest of the fitting out over the summer.

Outline cost of liveaboard in the UK

BSS costs (4 years) £150

insurance (1 year) £120

Gold licence, all rivers and canals (1y) £643 (less for only rivers or canals)

Red diesel Propulsion is about 0.75ppl

Licence initially would be continues cruising - Optional cost Mooring £1000-5000 (1y)

Here is the law on continues cruising – you can stay for two weeks in many spots http://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/library/633.pdf

Here is the width of canals - Red and blue are good for the lifeboat size wise - Gray likely not http://www.jim-shead.com/waterways/mwp.php?wpage=Inland-Waterways-of-England.htm

Working on the boat

insulation

Lifeboat dft (PDF)

Apple’s Middle finger: It’s Pointed at You

2013-05-18T17:02:47Z

The problem of people falling for lifestyle marketing.

A presentation of the idea of the Open Media Network and where it currently is

2013-05-18T12:13:11Z

A presentation of the idea of the Open Media Network and where it currently is

The OMN is owned by nobody and run by nobody. It is merely a set of "stupidly simple" open standards, open databases and working practices.

We are building some hubs to flesh the network out.

Currently there are over 20 sites in the network. And OMN embeds on such sites such as New Internationalist and Games Monitor. These embeds are using the OMN customisable video player.

How can you get involved? What is there at the moment? Let's highlight some of the applications you can currently use:

http://link.openworlds.info is an open database of links to radical projects. These can be added as an embed on websites to create the interlinking that is so important to the open internet’s health. This will be federated.

http://news.openworlds.info is a newsflash service to widen our networks outside facebook. It is building into an open data and open access federated network. You can grab an embed for your site sidebar.

http://visionon.tv Auto updating quality controlled video embeds with playlists (eg http://globalviews.visionon.tv/embed), drawing from a huge database of radical video. This is a working federated network.

http://blog.openworlds.info This is the first stage of an open blogging network.

http://fund.openworlds.info Open funding network – is a place for media activists to get small amounts of cash for their projects and equipment.

All of these applications actively need development work.

Please have a look at these links for more information and background on the network.

Here's an entertaining piece of polemic on the problem we face.

Here is an outline of possible OMN solutions

Why ethical aggregation and conversation?

It's all based on an ongoing understanding of the political history of the internet

A bit of humour

Why are conversations about technology, privacy and social change so difficult?

2013-05-18T12:08:16Z

Over the last 10 years I have found a lot of intolerant and prejudiced attitude toward the impact new technology will have on our work and society. A recent conversation sparked off this thought. Our society has foundation myths - and they aren't the bible any more - consumerism and selfishness/paranoid narcissism it seems to me – we are Thatchers children.

Many of the conversations about the impact of the open web and corporate social networking with people are like a conversation at the edge of a cliff. Its high and the cliff edge is crumbling into the maelstrom of the sea far below, am on the edge of the cliff looking out and the person am having the conversation is standing on thin air. Our foundation myths are about not looking dowen which make this issue invisible, and explains the reaction, people don’t what to see, if they look down they fall, not a nice feeling.

How to work through this will-full/wishful ignorance driven by narcissistic fear and denial? Its clearly unhealthy for us as a society in the medium and long term, but it is a useful coping strategy for the individuals and organisations in the short term.

Thought please?

Ethical aggregation and conversation - OMN

2013-05-15T10:39:23Z

What is ethical aggregation?

Always link back to the original producer hosting site. The exception to this is when the site is a corporate hosting site such as YouTube, then linking to an embed on an OMN site is preferable linking to that site. The content should be consumed where the producer of the content likes it – this should be built into our open CMS's as far as possible.

Reactive permissioning: the producer of content should be empowered (as far as technically possible) to decide how their content is consumed on sites. Eg, via embedding a simple title link, excerpt, or full content. This is by trusted feed not by genearly ristricting the content of the RSS feed.

Our databases should be open to exporting of content by simple RSS aggregation or by a XML export option.

Metadata should be synchronised across the networking to enrich all media content.

link back to the source
reactive permissioning
no reposting

It's OK to add additional hosting options for media files – but the original publishers hosting/views should be respected. In the RSS feed, add content file URLs as fallbacks rather than as default media sources. A good aim is to back up media sources tohttp://archive.org and as a torrent file. If new open hosting options come along then these can added. Then only fall back to the original host if the corporate hosting source errors or is censored (respect for producers hosting desion and for reasons of scaling).

Where is the conversation?

This is an unresolved issue that is looking for a good solution. Some key points:

Move it off corporate hosting and networking sites as much as you technically can such as FB, twitter and youtube. Use such sites to post links to OMN content and sites.
Can we move the conversations with the RSS feeds? So that the conversations happen across sites and

appear across sites in activity streams? This is probably technically possible within the RSS02 spec – let's implement it.

What is the Open Media Network?

2013-05-10T15:11:16Z

It's about human co-operation working with machine aggregation tools.

It's a stupidly simple social project using largly existing basic web technologies.

- RSS in and out via tag (with de-duping and field-matching).

This is it for the technical side of the project.

Then there is the social side: open licences, open data, open source, open process.

* open licences generaly means creative commons for content and GPL for software.

* open data means that all the core data of the projects can be exported into other node databases. This can be done via the basic RSS in and out or with an export option to a basic XML file.

* open source: that all the core software of the project is free to be edited and be changed.

* open process means that the organising of the network is done in public wikis and using public tools. Activerty strems makes projects transparent to user involvement.

The idea of the OMN is to re-build the vitality of the open web. The problem it hopes to overcome is HUGE.

* Applications like Facebook and Twitter have closed off the majority of people's online interactions and privatised/controled them for private gain and social control.

* openweb tools have withered from lack of use and resources.

There is currently little possibilty of an alternative to the polished world of google, facebook, twitter, amazon or e-bay etc. Many people are now talking about these issues, but the solutions they come up with are single sources, not networks. How do we make visible the value of cooperation?

The technical side is relatively easy. It's the social side that is the biggest barrier to revitalising the open web. The problem with all the failed pre-open networks is complexity and their proprietorial nature, This together with a failure of social cohesion (co-operation) has lead to an almost complete meltdown in the radical media space.

Why is the OMN different?

This is in no way a new project. Its innovation is purely in an understanding of the limitations of past projects. Over the last 10 years there have been many projects that have attempted the same thing.

Why will this work now?

It is built with existing standards - nothing is new or untested. It has an understanding of the failure of the social side of such networks. And aims to overcome this:

* the geek problem of "improving" projects and thus running the risk of breaking the simplicity is overcome by insisting that nodes support all of the open RSS standards to be part of the network. Thus if an improvement is useful it will spread and if it is not it will fade without breaking the underlying fallback tecnologies. The idea is that the network will be resistent to the failure of improvements and open to the sucess of innovation - while being robust if this for some reasn fails.

* The social problem - the network is built by trust, thus will scale organically with no overarching control or hierarchy to block innovation or accress. There are no hardcoded APIs that limit and shape user involvement and data flow.

* too big and distributed to fail - opendata and node redundancy will help the network to be robust and resistent to the failure of large nodes. Also, the trust nature of the network will keep nodes honest and reliable without a central controlling athority. One part's decline is actually an opportunity for another part's growth.

* the issue of state repression. The network is a part of the open web using only open web standereds. This makes it part of a project that is currently too big to fail. As long as the open web is needed by state actors and corporations the technology of the OMN cannot be shut down without shutting down the open web. If one node is shut down its job is simply taken up by another. Data duplication means that little, if anything, is lost.

* Too much concern with security limiting open process is a real danger. The unspoken question is: open process for whom? - currently we use facebook which is open procees for governments and corporations and fundamentally a closed process for the rest of us. Without open process, the trust which the network relies on is very limited. thus the growth of the network will be stunted, and it will likely wither. Open process will not appeal to everybody. But as it is fundamental, people unhappy with it should not get involved.

For the more tec motivated here is a old rightup:

http://springofcode.org/organise/-/wiki/Main/Open+Media+Network

and here http://springofcode.org/organise/-/wiki/Main/Open+Media+Network+proposal

Bigot sorry for “historian” claim

2013-05-05T14:25:14Z

Professor Niall Ferguson apologized today for having pretended that he was a serious historian.

“When I look back at the books I have written, I can now see that they are a collection of reactionary prejudices masquerading as well-researched historiography” he said.

Professor Ferguson made his name by arguing against the prevailing historical views on for instance the First World War and the British Empire. “I mean, to hold that the slaughter of World War One was justified, or that the Empire was of huge benefit to Johnny Native, how could anyone believe that?” he joked.

Secondary school history teacher Jack Williams commented "To be honest, it's a liberation. I don't need any more to explain to a class of students from all over the world why an established author thinks Britain civilized them."

Ferguson admitted that he had been attracted by the fame of other television “historians”. “I saw David Starkey able to strut his bigoted stuff all over the media on the basis of some crap pop-historical bios of the kings and queens of England, and I was jealous. I mean, as a poof, he doesn't care about the future, so how could anyone trust him with the past?”

Videos from the eSWP event - spacehijackers

2013-05-03T11:32:42Z

Interview in May 1st protest party in central London by space hijackersinterview with a humble custom service operator about overworking people and how to stop it.What is anarchy?

May 1st political party central London

Space hijacers afterparty when blocking a street in London was fun but made no sense. Grumpy liberal commenting on it.

We are rolling out some sites and applications that work within the OMN

2013-05-07T14:30:40Z

The OMN is owned by nobody and run by nobody. It is merely a set of Stupidly Simple open standards, open databases and working practices. We are building some hubs to flesh the network out.

What is there at the moment.? Let's highlight some of the projects:

http://fund.openworlds.info Open funding network – is a place for media activists to get small amounts of cash for their projects and equipment.

http://news.openworlds.info is a newsflash service to widen our networks outside facebook. It is an open data and open access federated network. You can grab an embed for your site sidebar.

http://visionon.tv Auto updating quality controlled video embeds with playlists (eg http://globalviews.visionon.tv/embed), drawing from a huge database of radical video. This is a federated network.

http://blog.openworlds.info This is the first stage of an open blogging network.

How to break the Chinese and Vietnamese firewalls

2013-05-01T10:36:35Z

OR How piracy is the greatest spreader of culture in history

I am currently in teeming and steamy Hanoi, surely one of the greatest cities in the world, having taken the epic sleeper train up from Da Nang in central Vietnam. Yesterday I lighted on an old quarter bookstore (not more than a table on the street) with a very shrewd and discerning selection of English language books. There I found a copy of Jonathan Neale's excellent "People's History of the Vietnam War". Astutely the old lady running the store suggested to me Graham Greene's classic "The Quiet American" to go with it, but I had just finished reading it. Glancing at Jonathan's history, the misspelt cover pages and scanned text showed me it was a pirate copy, which I'm sure would be a great delight to the author, even more if it was in Vietnamese. I couldn't check that yet. This is not an article to discuss the pros and cons of copyright protection so I will simply state that I consider file-sharing to be the most vital disseminator of culture in the world. My own use of it is fairly prolific, though probably not by ths standards of teenagers I know. Torrents found through pirate bay furnish our fortnightly film club of deeply obscure art movies, and the magnificant aaaaarg.org gives me more serious food-for-thought reading matter than I can ever get through, and helps impoverished doctoral students the world over. Downloading from spotify and youtube allows me to consume music on my smartphone whenever I travel. This activity is made more fun by the ferociously concerted attempts of a few corporations to alter the very nature of the internet in order to protect their sadly outdated business models. The resulting game of cat and mouse is frequently absurdly unequal, like watching repeated episodes of Tom and Jerry. When ISPs were forced to ban pirate bay by a daft court judgement, it took me two minutes to find a proxy, and pirate bay's traffic rose with the publicity.

So much for the corporate-sponsored legislative firewalls. Here in Vietnam there is a state-sponsored firewall no less absurd and meretricious. In Da Nang we can't get facebook (no tragedy for me), but can get the BBC. In Hanoi it's the reverse. (I shoud point out that I do not use the BBC for its news, which is as unreliable as any corporate media's, but for its excellent football coverage at what is a crucial juncture of the season for the Gunners.) A quick and simple installation of the excellent anonymity network Tor, gives me a blow-by-blow account of the Arsenal's battle for a Champions' League place. In the lobby of our hotel yesterday I met a young Chinese woman despairing at the blocking of the Zuckerberg empire in her home country. She said that people in China paid for a service to get round the Great Firewall (a VPN?). With something as important for human rights as internet freedom, trust someone to try to make money out of it. I suggested Tor to her as a free alternative. The Chinese authorities are continually trying to block Tor, but bridging apparently makes this much more difficult. For further information, see this excellent article.

Meanwhile, I must go out and buy a beautiful wooden birdcage in Hanoi's bustling markets, though not of course to house a bird. For someone who opposes corporate and state attempts to cage the internet, that might be considered hypocritical.....

The activist problem of failbook

2013-04-28T11:50:23Z

Almost all of Activism is organized on one corporate network and its run by this man

"Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including driling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline."

http://bit.ly/ZrWLm1

its the magnitude of the failure of the alternatives that is at issue - for many people the web is facebook - this is now true for almost all activist online organising. The man who controls facebook is an elitist tosspot right winger and controls all this activist organising. What other tools do we have?

UPDATE

Couple of points: FB is a trap, that has been sponge to close the open internet - to take us back to the days of mediated media and communication. The reach is not huge (just do a search to find out how your messages are already filtered) its actually very small for any message that does not further facebook's advertising/money making plans. Yes, it has revolutionised activism and it has enclosed it and pushed aside all alternatives... inclose and privatises then exploit... its an old story. Facebook like all dotcoms is likely to fail, but it has shifted the web towards closer and the next round of corporate social networking will consolidate this shift. With the open web (and digitization project) we have a once in a century opportunity to reshape our society, we are fucking this up big time

New journalism - Stories grow from the soil

2013-04-24T21:39:37Z

This is two draft's of a project for the end of the summer

FUNDRAISING FOR THE REAL STORY

Stories grow from the soil, they grow from social/geologic conflicts. Thus an interesting place to start a story is from the mud and dust where it stands. With this in mind we are fundraising to offer new perspectives on an urgent reality. We will walk across Israel and Palestine for 6 weeks, interviewing people in the communities we pass through. The countries' perspectives will come from the actual grassroots, from the mud. Traditional media is already covering the story from the top down. Who is covering where it matters?

Visionontv has the track record and expertise to make high quality, immediate reportage available globally. We will be shooting and publishing 3 video interviews a day, 5 days a week (using visionontv's innovating mobile reporting templates and technology) for a total of nearly 100 interviews. We will build a website to permanently host these videos as well as syndicating them widely to all contemporary media hosting sites and social networks. We will use visionontv's auto updating open media player to embed the videos widely on appropriate sites around the web. We will work towards having hosting/publishing on partner sites such as (****) in NYC and the (****) in the UK.

We have most of the equipment, time and skills to do this - all we lack is a basic budget.

Budget

£3000 to cover 6 weeks of reporting

Video equipment: £300 (external mic, lenses, solar charging set-up)

Second backup camera phone: £500

Air fare £400 x 2 £800

Insurance £50 x 2 £100

Website £300

Subsistence £100 a week (for both) x 6 £600

Backed support (publicity and social media etc) £100 x2

Contingency £200

Total £3000

The plan would be to fund-raise on Kickstarter and ecwip) and leave the UK in *** 1st.

#

Walking across a country – reporting from Israel to Palestine #

The modern world is full of seemingly unsolvable problems. The conflict between Palestine and Israel has been ongoing since the 1940's and has now reached a deadlock. The are some cultural/media crossovers but at visionontv we have a very B&W view of the conflict.

On visionontv we have been aggregating together all the best non-traditional media news videos into a stream of contemporary media. In the Israel – Palestine conflicts we have had a huge bias towards news from the Palestine perspective (link) which is obviously the opposite of what you would see on traditional media (link). This mismatch is normal for traditional media but problematic if you are interested in building a new, wider/more balanced contemporary media.

Our wider project at visionontv is to template new media techniques for journalism (link) This is to counteract the normal new media approach, which is to have hundreds of cameras covering the same spot, few of them distributing their images and very few doing the journalism to put it into perspective.

Stories grow from the soil, they grow from social/geologic conflicts. Thus an interesting place to start a story is from the mud and dust where it stands. With this in mind we are fundraising to try a new template – new technology and old paths. We will walk across the countries involved in the conflict for 6 weeks, interviewing normal people in the communities we pass through – the countries' perspectives will come from the actual grassroots, from the mud. Traditional media is already covering the story topdown. Who is covering where it matters?

We will be shooting and publishing 3 video interviews a day, 5 days a week (using visionontv's innovating mobile reporting templates and technology) for a total of nearly 100 interviews. We will build a website to permanently host these videos as well as syndicating them widely to all contemporary media hosting sites and social networks. We will use visionontv's auto updating open media player to embed the videos widely on appropriate sites around the web. We will work towards having hosting/publishing on partner sites such as **** in NYC and the **** in the UK.

We have most of the equipment, time and skills to do this all we lack is a basic budget.

Budget £2500 to cover 6 weeks of reporting

Video equipment £200- external mic- lenses - solar charging set-up

Second backup camera phone £500

Air fare £300 x 2 £600

Insurance £50 x 2 £100

Website £300

Subsistence £100 a week (for both) x 6 £600

Contingency £200

Total £2500

The plan would be to fund-raise on Kickstarter and acwip and leave the UK in *** 1st.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOLAR

2013-05-18T16:55:49Z

What’s the difference between solar panels tecnolaguys?

Mono-Crystalline

11-22% efficient
-Reliable
-Long life
-Made from single silicon crystals
-Works well in any conditions

Poly-Crystalline

-8-15% efficient
-Made from multi-crystal silicon
-Looks like fish scales or shattered glass
-Simpler manufacturing process

CIGS

-5-10% efficient
-Flexible
-More expensive
-Bigger size
-Easy to manufacture

Amorphous

-5-6% efficient
-Old technology
-Weak: break easily
-Nice looking
-Rigid
-Work well in shady conditions
-Typical use: solar calculator

Borrewed from http://www.goalzero.com/blog/2013/04/23/different-types-of-solar

Thinking out loud - looking at aspects of “stupid individualism”

2013-04-19T14:31:26Z

People are very competitive, an unexpected example of this is only doing finished work. That is not going though the very necessary process of public drafting and redrafting which is about bringing in different points of view and creating the new by stirring up the different/past.

This leads many people to live within their limitations and have little/no way of moving beyond these, they are stuck. They produce finished unmalleable work that is but a shadow of the possibility of creativity that is needed to move change forward.

This is partly to do with inherited life experience and limitations of world-view, but mostly it seems to me to be a psychological issue of insecurity and a weak sense of self. What do I mean by this... when people do not have a vision/hope/passion they fall-back to what they know. Distrust of things outside this grows and sets/solidifys to trap them and the circle is set.

I suppose the way to escape this is by passion/vision/hope – but the last one is probably the most important as the first 2 have a tendency to come from outside so can be controlling and thus limiting. Ones competitiveness has set-in the trap is sprung, what to do?

How we create a better, just, world with the people that are currently in the world rather than some theoretical people or class

2013-04-18T13:38:10Z

Some NOTES

It seems to me that after living through two explosions of protest DIY creativity, the CJB/anti roads movement and the climate camp are the examples am thinking about here. The are some lessons to learn. Both of these movements were “affinity group” driven at their core, that is a smallish groups (or interlocking groups) of friends – trust networks. They then built out into much wider community’s and movements.

Both were successful as long as this core – renewed itself – and rapidly fell apart when the core did not. In the case of the climatecamp the was a failed conhuse attempt to continue the organising in a open – bureaucratic - consensuses based way. Were the CJB flowed into the more political focused anti-globalisation movement – which burned out in the violence of summit hoping before becoming bogged down in the hierarchical infighting of the social forum movement.

Some thoughts:

1) the is an instinct for bureaucratic and hierarchical organising which is to strong to resist if the isn't a core healthy affinity group in place. Any successful group is likely to end like this if we take the second point into account.

2) Activist culture and affinity group forming has a strong (possibly necessary) tendency to exclusivity by lifestylism. This will exclude much of the diversity that is necessary for real sustainable changing community – be it in age, class, background, gender etc.

3) This puts a very real limit on the possibility of grassroots alternatives with the real people and cultures we are working with now.

4) the flow and use of the digital process may have a way round this by activity streams, self tagging and profiles – but this would have the cost of universal surveillances and transparent working practices – so would be a brave group of radical people to take this path in the face of possible state and corporate repression.

Where are we? Within its limits affinity group organising is fertile ground, but we need to build things out beyond these limits if we want a more humane society based on this grassroots organising. Current people, cultures and working practices do not do this yet ideas for changing this?

The Activists - FUCKED UP USE of corporate social media

2013-04-17T16:25:34Z

It consistently amazed me how activists walked into the trap of corporate social networking. I can understand NGO groups narrowness of focus, its were the funding is. I can understand traditional media's embracing of Facebook, Twitter and the closed ecosystem of app stores as its a perceived as a “safe” place to run from the crumbling business markets they are part of.

Lets look at each in turn:

Corporate social networking is perfect for the less radical charity's as the company's running theses networks wont to be seen to be social responsible and charity’s are the perfect place to be seen to care with out the risk of upsetting sponsors, advertisers and investors.

The more progressive parts of the traditional media, such as the FT have realised the trap they leapt into when building inside Facebook, Twitter etal. And are now back to prioritising building on the open web using HTML5. The less progressive side are now negotiating from a weak postion with these new powerful gatekeepers.

10 years ago Activist media was a worldwide phenomenon, inventing and leading many of the technology and techniques that are now mainstream. But two things happened, firstly they got bogged down in “activist process” and on the other the “lifestyle of geek” open-source culture. These together slowed innovation to a stop, the functionality and reach of such new networks as Facebook and Twitter rendered this moribund activist media less relevant to new generations of activists such as the climatecamp media team. Leaving space for the NGO focus embracing of corporate social media on one hand and the manipulation of traditional media on the other as the main ongoing successful strategy.

Were are we now? I was at the party to cover the celebrate of the death of Margaret Thatcher recently in Trafalgar sq. The were hundreds of cameras both video and stills probably as many people filming and documenting as there party goers or police. But almost no radical media made it online, the was a smattering of wonabe mainstream media such as Vice and Demotix. What interested me was running into all the retired activist and the ones that now work for NGO's it struck me that the is no continuity, no new radical media, it had almost completely ended. Few small exception’s to this are ourselves (visionontv) and ONN who are both small fish.

As I sead at the time, we as activist's fucked up in two ways: in wholesale embracing of corporate social media and in the narrowing of activist tec into geek lifestyle. Can we learn from this? Its time to reinvent grassroots bottom up media – its not to late.

Who do we trust?

2013-04-17T16:20:59Z

Those we see as trustworthy are Liars, cheats and swindlers. The bankers and bureaucrats at the moment. I think we have always had this backwards view of the world, is it a failure of the education system or a failure of our collective imagination - the needing to belong.

The 20th century has been the century of advertising driven consumerism. The 19th that of the racial mission of empire before that we had the certainty of religious dogma. In each we trusted and were constrained and betrayed.

We have a backwards view of the world today, though today we have potential way out of this (historic?) limitation or perhaps its hard-wired?

Lets test this and see:

The internet is a revolution in per-per connections in everything that can be digitised.

* we can make and distribute powerful, truth, filled media, we have the tools in our pockits and the open internet is still in place to carry this.

* we can build universal access to education, again the old gatekeepers are still currently not blocking this.

* we can make our own political institutions up from the grassroots – this will be harder.

With these we have the possibility of shining light and action on the Liars, cheats and swindlers – and by doing that we have a possibility to know who to trust and if we know that we can make this world of ours a more humane place.