Another decade, another politics?

It was great to meet folks today at Open2018, continuing tomorrow. I mentioned this new website and blog. This is an invitation to view (now) and contribute (possibly in a few weeks? when there’s more content here to respond to, and the frame is more apparent).

The site is labelled v0.5, it has pages saying ‘To be added’ and other implied pages just missing. But I wanted to get it up in time for Open 2018 so that it might serve as an ongoing connection with various folks present. As the Home page says, I view this as a prototype, possiibly for a wiki. Hacking the website in Wix was just a quick way of presenting a map of a landscape that I’d like to invite people to explore alongside of me. Not masses of people. I’m not aiming for 1000s of hits, likes and follows, and I’m not willing to open the blog to general commenting from all comers. But I would be very happy to have co-contributors engaging in dialogue and co-working in this blog space, and maybe putting resources up elsewhere on the site too.

If you feel you’d like to be a contributor/participant, let me know through one of the channels that we already have and I’ll create a Member ID for you?

I’ll not be offended if you don’t. We all have lots of plates we’re spinning! And I’m already working alongside you in one or other of the fields that I’m attempting to weave into each other in this website, so that’s ongoing anyway.

We all have lots of plates we’re spinning! And I’m already working alongside you

The aim of the site is to weave together several involvements that I’ve developed over the past year (actually, the past 50 years!). To my collaborators in each areea, each may seem discrete. But for my own clarity and synergy in cross-weaving, and for the possible extending of context and linkage, across various fields of activism, for collaborators, I feel the website is a good initiative at this time.

The website is a ‘teensies’ realisation of a boundary-crossing libertarian-socialist project I’ve been running since 'the radical science movement' of the 70s. That was part of a broader current of radical professional practice that inspired a whole generation of peers. This present initiative is an exploration of new politics that are quite outside what my baby-boomer generation has spent decades engaged in - quite new versions of old commitments and partnerships. It does have a ‘legacy’ aspect, seeking to carry some insights and context and resources across into projects that will outlive my generation. It’s very much a theorising project, attempting to cultivate languages, forms of literacy and genres of work that support ‘organic intellectual’ practice (thank you Gramsci, for that piece of language) across a very wide field, in the longer term. This is a long haul..

The past year. The past 50 years! It’s very much a theorising project, attempting to cultivate languages, forms of literacy and genres of work that support ‘organic intellectual’ practice in the longer term. This is a long haul.

It does seem to me that the current global movement for P2P-commons - the Commoning pattern-language thread of this website - is the biggest thing I’ve seen in my lifetime, and as far as I’m concerned this is where the remainder of my political life will be spent, figuring what the work is that’s needing to be done here, and what contributions this baby-boomer can make in this decade.

Hoping this looks interesting even in its current first-cut version. Hoping you’ll feel inclined to co-evolve this. If you feel it needs tweaking, or worse . . . please feel free, get me to make you an ID.

Love & solidarity mike