Exploring Realities and Options for Community Tech

Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias

The third instalment of the Seeking Abundance series by Promising Trouble - a deep dive into how community tech can help dismantle oppressions and support us all to thrive.

This blog post shares insights from a roundtable discussion which looked at the sector’s realities, what’s missing, and what more could be done; as well as sharing where we look for inspiration as Global Majority Tech Justice practitioners.

At the end, you’ll find a Glossary of Terms as well as two reflective prompts to support you and your teams in your own journeys exploring what life affirming community tech might mean for you and your communities.

Recommended tracks to play while you read:
🎵 Healer by Sampa the Great and Zaachariaha
🎵 How Far by Ego Ella May
🎵 Soul Severance by Ike Slimster
🎵 Shine by Cleo Sol

“Can we find liveable examples of what we mean by life affirming community tech? How can we strengthen our communities and build resilience in practice?”

Lil Green

In the roundtable we held back in November 2023 we spent some time collectively dreaming up what Life Affirming Community Tech could be - nature-inspired, non-extractive of people and planet, brimming with collective care practices and the resources to uphold these. Dreaming is a great place to begin. But how do we get there? What is the current reality in community tech? What needs addressing? What are our options?

This blog post explores what came up around the current realities of community tech and its infrastructure for Global Majority (or Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) Tech Justice practitioners and communities; how far we are (or are not) from the dream; and what we might do to get there. Together we gathered examples of inspiring life-affirming infrastructure or technology and identified present and future obstacles preventing their widespread adoption.

Roundtable participants included:

Original image source: Screenshot from the Tech Justice Roundtable organised by Siana Bangura and team for their Tech Justice research project for Catalyst.

In the roundtable, we challenged ourselves to share existing examples of life-affirming technology, systems, ways of working and organisations. Some members of the group focused on examples of inspiration, with many coming to mind, and others found it more appealing and relevant to focus on identifying the barriers and gaps at play, with some contributing to both aspects. Having multiple approaches to how we explored current realities and options was useful and a reminder that we often need a variety of ways into a topic depending on our preferences, ways of seeing the world or our mood.

Below are some of the examples we find ‘inspiring’ when we think about what Life Affirming Community Tech could be. This is by no means an exhaustive list or a perfect one - and the examples themselves raise different tensions, for example, there is a for-profit company included. We share all of these ideas/resources because to us they represent, in some way, a step in the right direction or a positive contribution to a different way of thinking/doing/being.

Inspiring Infrastructure / Strategies:

Creative Commons - sharing of licences for reuse.
Open Source Software - sharing of code for reuse.
Community Repair Hubs - for example local Repair Cafes.
Open Data Strategies - how authorities and governments share citizen data.
Code First Girls - closing the gender gap in tech through interventions in corporate spheres.
Growth Impact Fund - shared by Dama Sathianathan as an example of an interesting funding vehicle exploring equity investment, revenue share and patient debt, which also includes unconditional funding. The fund also provides a bit of infrastructure support too, giving people grants or a stipend before they apply for funding - in particular to help folks with living expenses and the cost of childcare.

Movements/Campaigns:

Equitable Internet Initiative - neighbourhood-governed community wireless networks.
Right to Repair - movement to reuse, refurbish, repair products.
Community Mesh Networking Movement - Wi-Fi sharing for Digital Inclusion.
The Sharing Economy, exemplified by shared accounts and software - reflecting our resilience in maximising available resources.
Agroecology / Food Sovereignty - sustainable farming practices (using tech) that support nature and local communities to thrive.

Platforms:

Papa Reo - a multilingual language platform grounded in Māori indigenous knowledge and ways of thinking, which is powered by data science.
Lesan AI - an online translation service for Amharic/Tigrinya languages.
Jitsi and Element - alternatives to Zoom and Slack/Discord.
Gimp and Inkscape - apps that are open source and community developed alternatives to Adobe creative apps.
Huggingface - where the machine learning community collaborates on models, datasets, and applications.
Kwanda - crowdfunding platform for infrastructure and poverty alleviation in the Global South.
Open Collective - legal and financial toolbox for grassroots groups.
Grapevine - an experimental tool for connecting artists and audiences outside the mainstream.

Companies:

Fairphone - modular phones.

Design / Data Frameworks and Groups:

Trauma Informed Design - Chayn’s research and frameworks for digital design.
Design Justice Principles Network - de-centering conventional models of creation.
CARE and FAIR principles - for Indigenous Data Governance. As well as other ways people are decentring human centred design and design thinking models of creation and centring methodologies developed by Indigenous peoples. Many in the group felt that User Centred Design, although widely adopted, could be misused in institutional settings because it presumes good intentions within the design process rather than critiquing these.
School for Computational Poetics - an experimental school in New York City supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It's a place for learning and unlearning.

“In our conversation about living examples, I brought up the CARE and FAIR principles around Indigenous data governance, which I've found really useful. My background is mostly in climate justice, so agroecology and food sovereignty came to mind. And it made me think about how tech is more holistic than being just a tool online. I think there are so many bubbles of really interesting points of creativity and I think community tech is one of the things which can help us find ways to connect these things together, because a lot of them have the same principles.”

Nish Doshi

Nostalgic Takes:

We reminisced about ‘pre-big funding’ apps like YouTube and ‘pre-algorithm’ Instagram. We spoke about instances where technology perhaps felt like it once aligned more authentically with users' needs.
We also discussed the way certain platforms (e.g. Twitter/X) have supported people powered movements, despite/in spite of how the platform itself is involved in suppression and censorship.

Wider sources of inspiration:

Queering Binaries and Plurality - there are many artists and practitioners exploring what it means to move away from traditional binary thinking/practices - and resist constant categorisation. We talked about drawing strength from plurality, from being many, and doing things in many different ways.
Indigenous Ecology and Systems Thinking - for example, Lil Green introduced us to Yasmin Ostendorf Rodriguez’s Let's Become Fungal Mycelium, which showcases how techniques and Indigenous customs from Latin America and the Caribbean are deeply rooted in multispecies collaboration, symbiosis, alliances, non-monetary resource exchange, decentralisation, bottom-up methods and mutual dependency.
Afrofuturism - a long standing cultural movement blending the African Diaspora with science, philosophy and technology. This included special mention to The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monae where people use soil to reconnect with their memories. The book is a collaboration that explores how different threads of liberation – queerness, race, gender plurality, love – become tangled in a totalitarian landscape and what it takes to unravel them.
Solidarity practices that decentralise money as mentioned by Debs Durojaiye - such as The Pardner System (a savings system whereby a group of individuals agree to save a set amount on a regular basis, usually once a week or month) or susu / sou-sou / osusu / asue (a type of informal savings club arrangement between a small group).
Transformative/Restorative Justice practices - ‘justice practices that go all the way to the root of the problem and generate solutions and healing there, such that the conditions that create injustice are transformed.’

I would add here that inspiring examples include the work (and legacy) that each and every one of the roundtable participants are stewarding in their day to day. Please look them up - they are all listed at the start of this blog.

Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias

Barriers, Binaries, Gaps

We also considered how Life Affirming Community Tech is hindered in the sector, society, our work and lives. We identified these main points:

FUNDING. Funding for alternative tech infrastructure is practically non-existent, and when it is present, it’s piecemeal.
“It’s the lack of money that stops everything. It stops you from looking after yourself. It stops you from gathering. It stops you from building infrastructure, because you know they're just so hard to get funded. It's so hard to bring money in.
There are people who have got amazing ideas and have the ability to build great things that would do good things for the world and for the community, but they have a job and they need a job and they can't focus on doing this work, because they need money. So you know I think that's the biggest barrier actually.”
Annette Joseph MBE
AUTONOMY. We need to advocate for data autonomy as a fundamental right. We spoke in particular about the need to prevent the corporate capture of powerful citizen journalism tools and maintain one-to-many forms of communication as a cornerstone to living full thriving lives.
ACCESS. Lack of access to tech knowledge, language and spaces. A recognition that it can feel like we need to have quite advanced coding or engineering knowledge to be able to make stuff happen or talk to developers. Who gets to learn relevant language and jargon is limited.
LANGUAGE. There is a lack of accessible language for communities, so as practitioners we find ourselves code switching (which is tiring) and also trying to build trust where ‘tech’ has/is causing real harm. This was especially reflected in our spin off conversation Global Majority Communities: Community Tech For Thriving and Abundance co-hosted by Reina Yaidoo and Annette Joseph MBE in Manchester in November 2023 - see the notes here (Session 4).
BINARIES. Artificial binaries get in the way of change. At multiple points during the roundtable we talked about how binary thinking/practices are tied to colonisation and ongoing harms for Global Majority communities in/with regards to tech (categorising/dividing as a means to control/curtail/conquer). For example, the artificial divide between STEM (science, tech, engineering, maths) and creativity, which can limit our explorations as a society.
“I’m really struck by how many of us are firmly in this creative space and tech space (often that feels as if those would be in contradiction) - and how we are seeing parallels and possibilities and the relationship between them. And the glue seems to be this pursuit of justice and equity.”
Siana Bangura
MONEY FOCUS. We need to be more intentional with practising solidarity. Our business models are often built on competitive foundations and we set projects up according to what money we have. How might we bring in practices of exchange across a beautifully diverse network in order to supercharge our work? At the same time, there is a divide between for-profit tech worlds and not for profit community/cultural worlds. We want to explore what models for income generation there are for community projects and spaces.

Our next blog post in this series considers how to address these barriers, shortcomings and tricky dynamics, whilst also ensuring that as Global Majority practitioners and communities we are adequately resourced to do the work.

Original image source: Design For Seeking Abundance by Roseanna Dias

Over to you

Whilst this conversation started within a circle of Global Majority folks, it is not contained there - it highlights the ways in which all of us might wake up to the realities of what’s hindering liberation, and what possibilities there are for moving towards it in empowerment and solidarity. This is a shared, sector wide endeavour. Whether you are a community tech practitioner or potential partner or funder, this is an invitation for you to take a few moments to do your own reflections and take action.

Why not start with these prompts? Freewrite, mind map or discuss…

Get Inspired: What’s already out there that gives you hope?

Get Real: What barriers, binaries, gaps or assumptions are holding you back?

This prompt forms part of a six step framework for reflection on the topic of life affirming community tech. We will be sharing prompts as we publish each blog post in this series.

We also acknowledge the labour involved in reading this if you are a racialised individual. You can find after care resources by following these links for meditation, ways to rest, and inspirational readings.

What’s Next?

This is the third instalment of the Seeking Abundance blog series by Promising Trouble - a deep dive into how community tech can help dismantle oppressions and support us all to thrive. Over the course of 2024 we hope to work with others and continue the discussion. Stay tuned on our socials (X / LinkedIn) where we’ll be posting one Seeking Abundance blog post every week for five weeks, starting with 14th Feb

Glossary of Terms

Digital / Tech Inclusion - refers to equitable, meaningful, and safe access to use, lead, and design of digital technologies, services, and associated opportunities for everyone, everywhere.
Global Majority refers to the demographic majority worldwide of Black peoples, Indigenous peoples, and Peoples of Colour. It helps to highlight the perspectives and experiences of the majority in a world shaped by White supremacy.
Tech Justice - 'Tech Justice is where technology is deployed in anti-oppressive ways. That can mean that technology isn't used against particular communities, or it's not used to make decisions that impact people disproportionately’ as defined by Siana Bangura and team in their Tech Justice research project.