Building before I preach

For years, I’ve filled my head and hard drive with plans to make life better for humans.

But I always met something the farther down any road I walked: extraction. This economy, and our technological order, demands betrayal of the user as if it were a law. It isn’t that users have value. Users are the value, which is why so many products we use are free.

I began to see the shape of something larger. I began to see the shape of the cage in which we are all trapped.

Native apps, web apps, infrastructure, hardware, platforms, all of these are built to exploit, all the way down to the capital markets that drive the enshittification profit cycle.

I developed a worldview, a criticism, and patterns and values that individuals could employ to better withstand the challenges of living in modern technological society.

But I had to get some practice before I could preach.

One of these values is to use our voice, which I’m doing right here and now.

Another value is to build better systems.

I resolved to do what I would ask others to do. I’m building something harder to describe than feel: personal servers that allow normal people to reclaim custody of their memories, expressions, and relationships. And the plans and software are public, free, and adaptable.

But today I was feeling bad that I’m spending so much time building that I don’t have the bandwidth to use my voice.

As I’ve begun to build in public and share what I’m doing, I realize how hard it is to describe mid-process. I hate talking about what I’m going to do. I want to show what I’ve done, and how you can do it too. Show, don’t tell. But first I must do.

And then I felt better, knowing that the doing I’m doing right now is going to make it possible to show when the building is done.

I’ll say:

“These are our problems, and we should embrace these values, and here, here is the accessible way that anyone can benefit and begin to own what we’d only been able to borrow.”

Someday soon, I’ll turn this massive motivation and capacity that keeps me up at night, the thing for which I sacrifice so many moments, toward evangelizing.

I’ll spend my life and voice to spread a solution that doesn’t yet exist.

And maybe when it’s got a life of its own, when people are helping each other and sharing these free, accessible, and easy solutions with nowhere for their value to be extracted, and some even join in the building, maybe then I’ll take a breath. And rest.

I’m going to finish before I give phones to my young daughters. I won’t see them caged. I’m not selling them out. Or you.

These are my values.

What do you use your voice for?

Who are you building for?

Are you building for something?

Or are you fighting for someone?