Here we rough-out early thoughts on creating a Democratic Tech Fund federation with the aim of fostering resistance to the digital coup.
See: Digital coup - to be added xxx
> These are personal notes. They don't present an official view of the Fund or the emergent Federation.
# Not just money, not just tech A democratic Tech Fund can't be just a means of redistributing money gifts, in certain cities. It must also be a collective practice of resisting Big Tech and becoming capable in contra-infrastructuring, across cities, regions and activist formations, across both the global North and South. (Contra)infrastructuring
Equally, the aims of the Fund can't simply be engaged in terms of which apps or which aggreations of tools or which platforms and server ecologies we have available to us. What matters is **the practices and relationships** that we can cultivate and sustain, as members of civil society.
What matters then, about the tech, is what new or necessary kinds of practice and relationship the tech can facilitate and sustain. This is why the thinking here is in terms of **'spaces'** that are digitally mediated, and the establishment of these spaces **in the commons**. Spaces
A name for the game is formación, formazione, formation, ausbildung, opleiding: capacity building in the movements of resistance and alternatives, and in civil society generally. Formación
# A real full stack This means that as we facilitate the development of 'a stack' of technological means, what we are focusing on is the **social relations** - the practices and the relationships - that the tech supports and enables, in practice.
In defining a stack that we mean to fund, we cover not only various tech layers - networks, platforms, toolkits, data and pattern recognition, etc - but also maifestly **'social' layers**: - the (virtual and geographical) **venues** in which people gather - the plural ways of communicating (**media**) that communities have available - the diverse commons of sharing and nurturing that **communities** value and cultivate, and - the overall viability and capability of **civil society** in relation to the state and the corporations, to consumer individualism and to over-professionalised and self-reproducing 'helping' services.
It's utterly important too that **the planet** should be present as a layer of concern, since digital tech can be hugely extractive and destructive, and stands on a global regime of exploitation and labour.
Thus we need to work in terms of 'a real full stack'. A real full stack
# Not basically money - Contributions Although funding (or revenue) are pivotal - fundamentally, to pay for the work of evolving and maintaining infrastructures that actually matter - this is not basically about money. It's basically about contributions in the commons and the life in the commons, secured by the stewarding of the commons.
This, rather than basically handling a financial system, were facilitating an ecology of contributions of various kinds. A defining contribution category for the DTF is money, yes: **financial gifts**. But alongside we cultivate contributions in-kind: gifts of aceses to already-achieved material means . These might be platforms; these might be documents; they might be code (definitely!); they might be services.
Most fundamental though is the third category of contribution: work time. It can be in design, in strategy, in care work in the community, in attention to the internal or external environment and dynamics; certainly in decision shaping and taking.
# Creeping up on our aims This is a big vision. So here in this notebook we figure out what kind of scaling and staging ought to be done in creeping up on this aim: ambitious and necessary.
Evolving the project's scope
A federation - not just a fund Start in Europe > To be evolved xxx Start in Cities > To be evolved xxx South from the start > To be evolved xxx
Evolving the activity
A fund - Contributions in a money commons A federation - Contributions in a commons of movement capability DTF as a federated organisation
Evolving the DTF internal tech stack
Start with a Platform-tech shopping list > To be evolved xxx Start with a Toolstack shopping list > To be evolved xxx
Evolving a mission statement
Then we can make some initial moves towards a Mission for federating digital > To be evolved xxx
Next: A federation
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