The key unit of social organization is still the community.
These communities can span continents now; the vast collages of Wikipedians and open-source coders have proved that. But the most important communities for our lives are on a smaller scale: the people we live with, in our house, on our street, in our city. It is this local scale where we care for each otherʼs needs and make decisions about the spaces that matter to us. And it is on this local scale that information technology can have some of its most potent and beneficial effects.
I work on connecting people to each other through web technology, building the capacity of individuals and organizations to communicate effectively and openly online. The inscrutable webmaster, holding the secrets of HTML and CSS close to the chest like talismans, should be a figure of the past; my approach instead is to pick up the tools, learn them, and give them away. Social change requires trust and connection. When we disagree, the answer is not to retreat to private ideological spaces: the remedy is more speech.
My work is usually organized into projects, some of which have resulted in useful resources. If you like what you see, get in touch and let’s talk.
