Tech – the SEN

Crash Course

Here’s the situation: “tech” is arguably everything from your cell phone to your screwdriver. Right now, we’re talking about computers and the software they run. There are levels to software – some that everyone sees (like the “user interface”) and some that only some people see (like the “back-end” or source code) and some that no one sees (but computers can “see” in a sense…).

That makes it easy for tech to function like a double agent. The “user” (maybe you) gets something out of the thing, like a way to contact your cousin about the family reunion you want to plan. You click a few things and type a message and hit Send, and voila, your cousin gets an email from you.

But the source code can be doing lots of things besides sending your email, and you might not know it. That’s why you care about the difference between Big Tech and “Free Open Source Software” or FOSS for short. FOSS exists because at the dawn of personal computing, some geeks were thinking, “Computer code can be dangerous and nasty if it isn’t kept under the public eye, and in the public’s legal ownership to do with it whatever anyone needs to do to test it.”

Fast forward and we have copyleft – that’s a legal framework that says “the copyright for this property is open to the public – for viewing the source code, running the program, changing it, testing it out in any way, shape, or form” and that is why we have a global community of angels mostly volunteering to build, run, and test software that cannot be made to spy on people or collect their data, or do any other nefarious thing behind our backs.

Unfortunately it’s all a lot more complicated than just that but for right now, just know this: if you think of yourself as “not tech savvy” but “concerned about Big Tech” and desperate to find ways to be on the right side of history during this dark, dark time where data centers are threatening our environment and big tech is clawing away every last shred of civil rights we ever had… then this page is for you and it’s written by one of the many people happy to become your friend and help you out as you move through this mess with us.

If you want to talk more, plan a workshop, or just get connected to move toward the community where you belong, please reach out.