I wrote this five years ago:

“Democracy or capitalism? Pick one.

If, like me, you grew up in the 80s, you probably unthinkingly accepted the neoliberal maxim that democracy and capitalism go hand-in-hand. This is one of the greatest lies ever told. Democracy and capitalism are polar opposites.

You cannot have a functional democracy and billionaires and trillion-dollar corporate interests and Silicon Valley’s Big Tech misinformation and exploitation machinery. What we’re seeing is the clash of capitalism and democracy and capitalism is winning.

Are we past a tipping point? I don’t know. Perhaps. But we can’t think like that.

Personally, I’m going to keep working to effect change where I feel I can be effective: in creating alternative technological infrastructure to support individual freedoms and democracy.

We’ve already laid the infrastructure of techno-fascism. We’ve already created (and are creating) the panopticons. All the fascists need to do is move in and take the controls. And they will do so democratically, before destroying democracy, just as Hitler did.

And if you think the 1930s and 40s were something, remember that the most advanced tools to amplify the destructive ideologies of the time were less powerful than the computers you have in your pockets today. Today we have machine learning and are on the brink of unlocking quantum computing.

We must ensure the 2030s are not like the 1930s. Because our advanced centralised systems of data capture, classification, and prediction plus a hundred years of exponential increase in processing power (note: I do not use the word “progress”) mean the 2030s will be exponentially worse.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, we have a common enemy: the nationalist international. The problems of our time transcend national borders. The solutions must also. The systems we build must be both local and global at once. The network we must build is one of solidarity.

We created the present. We will create the future. Let’s work together to ensure that that future is the one we want to live in ourselves.”

– In 2020 and beyond, the battle to save personhood and democracy requires a radical overhaul of mainstream technology

https://ar.al/2020/01/01/in-2020-and-beyond-the-battle-to-save-personhood-and-democracy-requires-a-radical-overhaul-of-mainstream-technology/

And that’s why I’m working on building the Small Web.

https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/

With ZERO funding from the EU and multiple rejections from NLNet/ngi (because they still don’t get it).

https://ar.al/2022/10/20/nlnet-grant-application-for-domain-rejected/

(That’s from 2022. We were also rejected in 2024 for my work on Kitten, Domain, and Place as outlined in my talk, linked below, but I was too tired to write about it again.)

https://ar.al/2024/06/24/small-web-computer-science-colloquium-at-university-of-groningen/

So for fuck’s sake, if you agree with my vision for a technological (and thus societal) future different from the hellscape we currently inhabit, and want to help us explore one possible path towards it, please fund our damn work. (Because, clearly, the EU is adamant about not doing so.)

https://small-tech.org/fund-us/

Other ways to help:

- If you know of folks that are ethically compatible who offer no strings funding, please try to secure some for us (my time is 100% spent on coding at the moment).

- If you know of conferences that pay their speakers, ask them to have me speak on the Small Web. It can be as technical or non-technical as you like and I won’t do it for free but I’m happy to accept, within reason, what they can afford (in addition to travel and accommodation being covered) and any fees received go to Small Technology Foundation, our not-for-profit.

- Help share this far and wide.

Once Domain is released and we have the first Small Web host running on small-web.org – hopefully the first of many that will be run by other folks in the future – and we start taking commercial sign-ups for Small Web places, we should eventually have the money problem solved (because apparently that’s a problem you have to solve to gain the privilege of working for the common good in our world because our system is unabashedly shortsighted).

So, yeah, anyway, g’morning! How’s your day going so far? :)

(You made it this far? You deserve a hug. And don’t worry, I’m just venting. Things will get better. It’s just frustrating swimming upstream all the time.)