The project is about mobilising the capability that in fact exists in the collective, to resist the digital coup. We explore this here.
Collectively we do have the capacity to do something drastically different from the Big Tech model - in municipal traditions, in the coop tradition, in civil society activism and in tech (FLOSS) capability. 'Tech' can be evolved and inhabited in ways that empower people and communities rather than entrap them. See (Contra)infrastructuring
What the collective needs is a systematic portfolio of development strands and orchestrated collaboration, plus persistence, a different scope of practical vision, and some down to earth funding. The funding is what the Democratic Tech Fund is for, and the vision and collaboration is what the federation is about.
It is possible to lay down infrastructure that can ‘dance’ to quite a different tune. It will surprise many people, who think ’tech’ is what Microsoft, Google, Facebook and OpenAI have chosen to blindfold us with. There are radically different, democratic and people-oriented visions that these power players have been very busy burying and pushing aside.
It's not only the tech oligarchs who say: Move Fast and Break Things’. Manifestly, this is a war cry also of deeply anti-social and disabling and power-grabbing forces on the far (white supremacist, extractivist, fascist) Right. Big Tech is precisely the instrument of a massively disabling political intention. And 'democratic' tech is then a political and not merely a technical response. > Democratic tech is a political and not merely a technical response.
It involves resistance and re-weaving and regime change. It calls for and supports and mobilises the capability of the social collective, in the face of manipulative elites, with weaponised digital technology.
It's all of these capabilities in the collective, that the federation is for. It's for the tech, that the fund is for.
See also: The digital coup - To be added xxx Weaponised digital technology - To be added xxx