The geek answer (bad faith or blindness): “If only everyone learned to code, then society would be fairer.”

The activist answer: Code is part of the landscape, but culture, governance, and lived practice matter more. We don’t escape domination by teaching more people to type commands, we escape by changing what we do together with the tools.

Why “teach everyone to code” has become a dead-end slogan – it’s been tried, it’s been funded, and yet it hasn’t shifted power one bit. […]

The geek answer (bad faith or blindness): “If only everyone learned to code, then society would be fairer.”

The activist answer: Code is part of the landscape, but culture, governance, and lived practice matter more. We don’t escape domination by teaching more people to type commands, we escape by changing what we do together with the tools.

Why “teach everyone to code” has become a dead-end slogan – it’s been tried, it’s been funded, and yet it hasn’t shifted power one bit. […]

In our current mess of a world, one of capitalism’s illusions is the promise of #frictionlessness, that everything should just work, that all interactions should be smooth, efficient, and untroubled. In tech this is the logic of the #dotcons, keeping the “users” engaged, never give them time to think, and above all don’t let the real world get in the way of the pipeline between their attention and your profit.

This has infected the #geekproblem deeply. In software culture, especially, […]

If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.”It’s “I just write the code.”It’s “We’re neutral tools.”It’s “Let’s keep politics out of it.”

This isn’t just naivety, it’s a deep, culturally reinforced avoidance of responsibility. And it’s one of the key reasons why even […]

We dig. Turn over the old soil. Question assumptions. Get honest about what’s working and what’s not. We plant. Build in the open. Share power. Let go of fear. We grow. Not towards scaling up, but spreading out, resilient, diverse, interconnected.

The Fediverse could still be a true commons. But we need to build it as one, together. Right now? Our thinking and common sense is building fenced off little kingdoms, each with its own rules, its own etiquette, and its own […]

We dig. Turn over the old soil. Question assumptions. Get honest about what’s working and what’s not. We plant. Build in the open. Share power. Let go of fear. We grow. Not towards scaling up, but spreading out, resilient, diverse, interconnected.

The Fediverse could still be a true commons. But we need to build it as one, together. Right now? Our thinking and common sense is building fenced off little kingdoms, each with its own rules, its own etiquette, and its own […]

If you need a working definition of the #geekproblem, it’s the habit, no, the reflex, of putting the social side of tech outside of tech. It’s the behaviour of someone sticking their head in the sand and mumbling, “That’s not my department.”It’s “I just write the code.”It’s “We’re neutral tools.”It’s “Let’s keep politics out of it.”

This isn’t just naivety, it’s a deep, culturally reinforced avoidance of responsibility. And it’s one of the key reasons why even […]

In our current mess of a world, one of capitalism’s illusions is the promise of #frictionlessness, that everything should just work, that all interactions should be smooth, efficient, and untroubled. In tech this is the logic of the #dotcons, keeping the “users” engaged, never give them time to think, and above all don’t let the real world get in the way of the pipeline between their attention and your profit.

This has infected the #geekproblem deeply. In software culture, especially, […]