News

The Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford is closed.* I've been fired. (All positions were eliminated, including mine. Call it laid off, made redundant, fired. I'm so deeply angry and disappointed it doesn't matter to me what you call it. People above my pay grade made decisions to close the lab and cut all positions.) The reasons for closure had nothing to do with the need for or the quality of the work.

The work of helping civil society support democratic governance by countering the centralizing, powergrabbing force of dependence on corporate digital systems is more necessary than ever. Today, tech companies and governments are openly colluding to build and control a digitally-powered White Christian Nationalist state by marketing the products as either "AI" or "Patriotism." Civil society must ask bigger questions about the tools it uses than those simply focused on false metrics of efficiency.

I hope to continue to do what I can - given how disabled long covid has left me - to be useful. And to be clear - I own the Blueprint series and am doing all I can to not only keep it going but to make it better, more relevant to more people, and even more influential. There's a lot of fear and uncertainty; horror and cruelty out there. I want to prefigure thriving, durable communities on a healthy and generative planet. Please reach out if you've got ideas.

*The website is completely out of date and misleading.