Building Digital Public Parks with Deepti Doshi

New_ Public Invests in Local Online Spaces as Digital Civic Infrastru…

archived 11 Apr 2025 17:34:52 UTC

Local Digital Spaces Are Essential Civic Infrastructure (SSIR)

With traditional community spaces underfunded and neglected, investing in the health of our online gathering places has become essential. <meta property=

Creating a Flourishing Digital Public Space for Your Local Area | Notion

A how-to guide for admins and moderators of inclusive, uplifting, and public-spirited local Facebook groups, Discord servers, subreddits, and more...

Building Digital Public Spaces for Good

A Conversation with Eli Pariser, Co-Founder and Co-Director of New_ Public

DWeb Virtual Meetup — Jan 2025 — Latest in the DWeb Ecosystem

DWeb Virtual Meetup (January 2026) featuring speakers sharing their latest DWeb product releases and community organizing efforts. SPEAKERSmauve signweaver, Awana Digital: Awana Digital supports those working to defend their human and environmental rights, but who lack the tools to do so. Their local partners represent marginalized communities worldwide, including Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities. They train local partners to use basic digital tools to gather, share, and manage information about environmental and human rights infractions. mauve presented CoMapeo Abare, an open-source local-first Android app designed with Indigenous communities, to enable non-technical users to easily map and document biodiversity, environmental threats, and human rights abuses.Blaine Cook, New_ Public: New_ Public is a nonprofit focused on building digital public spaces that foster connection, facilitate pluralism, and encourage civic engagement. Blaine presented Roundabout, their new social app and website to improve information sharing in rural and suburban towns, and city neighborhoods — areas with about 10,000-50,000 people.Afri Schoedon, Department of Decentralization (DoD): The Department of Decentralization is a collective of people from Berlin, who first assembled in 2018 to organize ETHBerlin hackathon. They aim to be an agnostic vehicle to drive adoption, educate newcomers, and raise awareness of the challenges and benefits of decentralization and open-source software. Afri shared their experience of previous DoD events and share the technologies and approaches that their collective sees as being on the horizon of network decentralization.Facilitated by DWeb Senior Organizer, mai ishikawa sutton

Local Lab | New_ Public

Helping local communities create flourishing digital spaces

Digital Spaces Directory | New_ Public

As the social media landscape changes and a new wave of digital spaces emerges, this Directory is meant to be a resource for our field — a jumping-off-point for further exploration and research for anyone who’s interested in studying, building, stewarding, or simply using digital social platforms. We hope this will inspire creative exploration, spark new collaborations, and highlight important progress.

Ivan Illich and Silence as a Commons | David Bollier

Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, calls it the “corporate takeover of nature and the Disneyfication of the wild.” He’s referring the American Recreation Coalition, an industry trade association, and its new “Scenic Byways” website that proposes inserting “tonal patterns” into roadways as a new form of “innovative communication” (i.e., advertising). Kym Murphy, the former v.p. for environmental policy at the Walt Disney Company, explains:

Trails and public spaces — Rafael M. Batista

A reply to Kenny Peng and colleagues on designing social media around trails — and why the campground or the piazza may be the better analogy.

National Park Service: Public Use of the National Park System (1872-2000): Chapter 9

The first part of this section reviews basic ideas for dispersing visitors outside the System. While merit is seen in some of these ideas, the conclusion is reached that at best they can make only a limited contribution to regulating mounting park travel because there is no substitute for a visit to a national park. The second part of this section then reviews concepts and methods for regulating public use inside the parks through park developments, land classification, including wilderness area designations, and vehicular controls, including new transportation systems.

New_ Public

We are researchers, engineers, designers, and community leaders working together to create digital public spaces where people can thrive and connect.

Beyond Digital Exhaust: Reclaiming Agency in the Context Economy - A MozFest Discussion on Personal Context Infrastructure and the Future of AI

At this year's MozFest in Barcelona, we convened an urgent conversation about what may be the defining struggle of our digital future: who will control the vast