In technology, a stack is a metaphor: a way of visualizing a collection of software systems used together to get work done. — Nick Gracilla, Medium
One important part of reading any digital text that is often overlooked is the software and hardware that powers the text. This digital garden is intentionally built to avoid google software.
As someone who grew up in Silicon Valley and at one point wanted to be a programmer, I am deeply concerned about the ways that large capitalist tech corporations increasingly structure our lives. Google suite, for example, has a chokehold on the educational market. In SFUSD, we use nearly all of our worksheets, presentations, student writing, grading, and other day to day facets of teaching is produced and stored on google servers. We do not own that data. It is owned by a cooperation who who profits off of apartheid 1 and greenwashing.2
The Tech Won’t Save Us podcast (a digital and audio text) chronicles how the capitalist and facist interests in Silicon Valley seek to shape our future. They insist that tech is “inherently political” and “encourages listeners to think beyond the confines of the capitalist tech industry, to consider how we can dismantle oppressive technologies, and how technology can be developed for the public good.”3
In contrast, this website is written in obsidian a notetaking app that stores the information in local plain text markdown files. These files are used to generate a static website.
The design of this project intends to follow the Lib-Static approach, a “development methodology that leverages static web technologies and librarian skills to create engaging web publications hosted on minimal infrastructure.”4 This digital garden is open source; check out the code repository.
By taking an open approach, this digital garden intends to disrupt the hegemony of tech capitalist platforms and increase digital literacy by exposing the how power shapes digital texts.
Footnotes
-
Google has a billion dollar contract with the Israeli state to provide the cloud technology that facilitates Israeli apartheid and generates targets (including people in their own homes) for bombing campaigns. Learn more from tech workers fighting back at No Tech For Apartheid. ↩
-
Google facilitates 90+% of global internet searches and takes money from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell and other big oil companies to greenwash their activities. ↩
-
Tech Won’t Save us is a weekly podcast hosted by Paris Marx. Learn more at https://techwontsave.us/ ↩
-
The Lib-Static methodology was created by librarians and intends to be Open, Simple(ish), Librar* Optimized, and User Focused. Learn more at Lib-Static.github.io. ↩