In alt-tech, everything feels broken. At the heart of this is a deep, unexamined assumption: that control and certainty are required to make “good” software.

But in reality, software – like people, like communities – is transient, messy, lossy. It drifts. It composts. It never fully stabilises, and that’s normal.

Trying to force idealised control onto something that’s inherently fluid is exactly why so many alt-projects fail. They fight their own nature. They chase perfection, purity, and certainty, and in doing so, they kill the culture that would have kept them alive.

This is the root of the #geekproblem: the belief that the world should adapt to the code, rather than the code adapting to the world.

Until we let software breathe like humans do – flawed, shifting, open – we’ll keep breaking the very alternatives we’re trying to build.

In the alt tech, everything is broken. At the heart of this is a assumption that control and certainty are needed for good softwear. Were in reality softwear matches the human condition trasentery/lossy. Trying to force the ideal is why most of our alt projects do not work. This is the base of the #geekproblem