For this #GivingTuesday I'm going to make the (biased) argument for why you might consider donating to @spritely, especially if you care about a healthier future for the internet! https://spritely.institute/donate/
Here's a little thread explaining more... 🧵
@spritely is developing some damn cool tech: Distributed programming! Leading the way on a secure P2P protocol (OCapN)! A WebAssembly toolkit!
But: is "cool tech" what matters? *Why* are we trying to make cool tech? What are the *social implications* of making this technology?
I gave a talk on this recently: "Protocols and Purpose in a Global Democratic Crisis" https://c-tube.c-base.org/w/f9pF5pwxX8mVkmW2i3dU1M
*None* of the decentralized social networks today are robust enough to handle the threats facing vulnerable people and activists today. Not the present-day fediverse, not Bluesky/ATProto. What can we do?
What can we do? Is there hope? Is it possible to build something better?
Spritely was born out of this work, and the strive to create infrastructure allowing for "Networks of Consent". More on that here: https://spui25.nl/programma/we-can-change-the-defaults-building-networks-of-consent-and-spaces-of-joy-in-the-ruins-of-social-media
Christine Lemmer-Webber, best known as co-author of ActivityPub, the decentralized social networking protocol, will speak about the crisis technologists face. Why must we revise the default assumptions of the web 2.0 era? She will introduce the work the Spritely Institute is doing to make a positive future possible.
I love computers. When people say "Computers were a mistake!" it makes me sad.
But it's had to blame people. The direction computers have gone in, the experience people largely have had, is a loss of agency and empowerment.
How do we bring that back, and do better than ever even?
User-empowering technology is a lot of work, corporations aren't motivated to build it. We need research and development of new tech that changes the game from an org that isn't bound by pushing profit.
And that's why @spritely is a nonprofit research lab.
So... what are we doing?
We're building cool tech:
- Goblins, p2p distributed programming: https://spritely.institute/goblins/
- Hoot, a WebAssembly toolkit (and Scheme->WASM compiler) https://spritely.institute/hoot/
- OCapN, a secure distributed p2p networked protocol https://ocapn.org/
But... what are we *doing* with these things?
@cwebber As much as I love to see folks building real, tangible software in LISP, I’m curious whether y’all have had discussions already about whether/when to expand Goblins etc into more widely used ecosystems like Python, Rust, JS etc?
Anyway, *trundles off to double check whether he set up a recurring Spritely donation already or had just been thinking about it…*
Christine Lemmer-Webber
Jeff Forcier