The coming civil war over general purpose computing

Reclaim Control | over your technology, your devices, your data, your digital life.

You have the right to control your data, devices, and services. We coordinate, develop and foster communities of Reclaimers who want digital independence. Together, let's reclaim the right to a technical future of data sovereignty, digital autonomy, responsible governance, and collective care online for all.

Toward People’s Community Control of Technology: Race, Access, and Education

This field review explores how the benefits of access to computing for racialized and minoritized communities has become an accepted fact in policy and research, despite decades of evidence that technical fixes do not solve the kinds of complex social problems that disproportionately affect these communities.

Liberatory Computing

We live under a capitalist mode of computing. The tools, languages, techniques, and assumptions of digital systems are structured by economic forces that shape not just what we can do, but what we can imagine doing. By separating production from use, producing inflexible software, and slicing up computing into siloed apps, your agency is held back by a tech industry that profits from a population rendered computationally passive.

Liberatory Computing

We live under a capitalist mode of computing. The tools, languages, techniques, and assumptions of digital systems are structured by economic forces that shape not just what we can do, but what we can imagine doing. By separating production from use, producing inflexible software, and slicing up computing into siloed apps, your agency is held back by a tech industry that profits from a population rendered computationally passive.

Programmer Power

prying open “software freedom”

Can You Trust Your Computer? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call “trusted computing,” large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. (Microsoft's version of this scheme is called Palladium.) Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.

Who owns your data?

A Supreme Court case about a bank robbery could redefine your digital rights.

Reclaiming the Computing Commons

Resisting the commodification of information is a political struggle, not a technical one.

The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free?

Tired of relying on Big Tech to enable collaboration, peer-to-peer enthusiasts are creating a new model that cuts out the middleman. (That’s you, Google.)

End-user Programming

A vision for empowered computing that reaches back forty years. Our research lab examines why it has been so hard to achieve.

When Cursor Wiped a User's PC: A Cautionary Tale of AI Overreach

We recently received a sobering story from a subscriber, a stark reminder of the potential pitfalls when granting AI agents unfettered access to your system.

Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps

The original promise of personal computing was a new kind of clay. Instead, we got appliances: built far away, sealed, unchangeable. In this essay, we envision malleable software: tools that users can reshape with minimal friction to suit their unique needs.

We Need A New Kind Of Data Rights

Associational data rights would empower communities to reclaim power from Big Tech