The SmolTech Answer, Featuring WorcShop
As I look around our country today, I see a lot of problems, and I see a lot of narratives about those problems. Some of those narratives are true. They’re often missing a larger context that paints a very different picture though.
SmolTech is my answer to the problems I see coming from my industry.
WorcShop is a separate business that aligns well with my plans, which recently agreed to bring me on as their Director of Technology.
The Problems With Big Tech
There are a number of problems with big tech. Some have to do with the behavior of the companies. Some have to do with the behavior of the users. Some have to do with larger socioeconomic issues.
The Automation Issue
Decades ago, Alan Watts summed up the automation issue better than I ever could.
Now, what happens, then, when you introduce technology into production? You produce enormous quantities of goods by technological methods, but at the same time you put people out of work. You can say, “Oh, but it always creates more jobs. There will always be more jobs.” Yes, but lots of them will be futile jobs. They will be jobs making every kind of frippery and unnecessary contraption, and one will also at the same time have to beguile the public into feeling that they need and want these completely unnecessary things that aren’t even beautiful. And therefore, an enormous amount of nonsense employment and busywork — bureaucratic and otherwise — has to be created in order to keep people working. Because we believe, as good Protestants, that the devil finds work for idle hands to do. But the basic principle of the whole thing has been completely overlooked: that the purpose of the machine is to make drudgery unnecessary. And if we don’t allow it to achieve its purpose we live in a constant state of self-frustration.
Hypothetically, if we were able to create enough automation to remove all work, we could exist in a society where everyone has the resources they need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, community), or a society where no one can afford necessities because no jobs are available to pay a wage.
The Wealth Issue(s)
The first wealth issue is pretty straightforward, and is related to the concentration of wealth in a relatively small area. An industry which pays a large number of people extremely high salaries results in an increase in costs around itself.
A salary of $50,000 per year goes further in a community where the average is $30,000 than a community where the average is $150,000.
Second is the impact on the established industries. Redfin can help you remove the local buyer agents from the purchase or sale of a home. This represents a savings for the seller, but removes an opportunity for the agent.
Different tech platform seek to “disrupt” different industries, but the net effect across the entire tech industry is a general loss of opportunity, and a transfer of money out of communities and into communities where it feeds to problem number 1.
The third issue has to do with the behavior of the users of the platforms that the businesses build.
Redfin is a great way to learn what properties are available for sale. This is a boon for people who want to buy a new home. It’s also a useful tool for people who want to build real estate empires. While money is not a fixed resource, real estate is.
The combination of excess money and tools for hands-off investment has fueled real estate bubbles which will necessarily burst.
The Propaganda Problem
The advertising industry, as it exists today, is propaganda.
The industry uses psychology to manipulate the public into changing their behavior.
Advertising funds large sections of the tech industry. Google is a massive advertising company. Facebook is a massive advertising company. These advertising funds build tools that give them control over commerce.
Combined with big data companies that buy and sell our personal data, these tools have even been used to manipulate elections within our country.
My Answer To Big Tech
So, how do we prevent this state of self-frustration? Small Tech (SmolTech) seems like an answer to me.
My industry built the future using Open Source software, and then monetized the service. Many major sites are built using Open Source programming languages on Open Source operating systems using Open Source databases. Studies have shown that enterprise software stacks contain 75% Open Source software.
The same tools are available for us to use for our purposes. We can replace the remaining 25% and use the software stacks in new ways.
Amazon’s mobile app allows you to easily order whatever you need from Amazon or any of their affiliates online. There’s no reason a second mobile app couldn’t allow you to buy from any of the local businesses around you.
People within a community who want to hire a workforce can easily hire someone halfway around the world to create logos, copy for a website or to develop code for them.
They could also hire someone in their neighborhood if it was easy to find someone who was skilled and available. Communities do better when they work together. Money spent within the community continues to circulate in the community.
What Needs To Change
Some of the people with the skills necessary to build these tools need to dedicate the time and energy to do the work. This can mean someone choosing to contribute on a volunteer basis. This can also mean that someone with the money chooses to hire engineers to do the work. This can also mean someone with the motivations learning the skills necessary in order to accomplish the goals.
This type of infrastructure is nothing new to my industry. The only change is the focus of the people involved, and how it is managed.
Where big tech is about national or global platforms for providing a service, SmolTech is about communities building and managing tools to facilitate local commerce, and then sharing those tools with other communities. This puts more power into the hands of the community.
In my mind, this is the Open Source culture without the Corporate leadership.
This is not to say it’s easy. It is hard work that takes real time, experience and equipment. It may also take money, but that depends on how the computing power is obtained.
Tech As Infrastructure
In the Big Tech world, services are provided by different vertically aligned businesses that work on maximizing total profitability.
There are social network companies, retail companies, music companies, aucition companies, and others. Each one is operating at a national or global scale, and each tries to capture as much of the user base for that need as possible. Some of them, like Amazon, offer sales platforms while actively exploiting their access to data in order to strategically compete against their own sellers.
In a SmolTech community, there is a group managing the infrastructure for the community. They are paid for the work that they do, but their motivation is to facilitate local commerce, rather than profit from it. They are infrastructure for commerce, not participants.
Community Cloud
Amazon operates the world’s biggest cloud provider, with over 1.4 million businesses run on their infrastructure. This allows businesses to scale depending on need, and spin up new infrastructure quickly without needing to buy hardware themselves.
A SmolTech community cloud can be built using older retired hardware or inexpensive single board computers like the Raspberry Pi. The goal for a community cloud is not to sell as much computing resources as possible, but to provide the infrastructure that local businesses need in order to do the work that they are doing.
Connecting Work with Workers
Big Tech, and most of the corporate world, is built around full time employment. The expectation is that someone works 40 hours a week for the employer willing to pay them the most money.
We sell our time wholesale.
The SmolTech approach is to create an inventory of skills within the community in the form of local directory, and then create a jobs board where people can express what they want to do and connect with someone with the ability to achieve them for it.
This can mean hiring a local business of any size, or hiring a person to complete a task.
Instead of reaching out to the most popular electrical or plumbing company, we can have a central location in the community where someone can express a need and receive bids.
This is an extension of the gig economy movement, but with a decidedly local focus. In a longer term, it should help connect communities in ways that they are currently lacking.
Online Store
In addition to selling their time, people can sell products.
In some cases this may mean someone arranging to have something built by leveraging a hired workforce, or it can be creating things themselves to sell within the community.
It can also mean a traditional local retailer who imports goods into the community from other communities, and makes them available locally.
The easier we can make it to buy and sell locally, the more money will remain within the community, where it can recirculate.
Local Services
There are local answers to companies that provide services like food delivery, ride sharing, etc. Platforms like DoorDash, Uber, etc can just as easily be operated within the community.
Finding ways to connect the community with the services that people are capable of providing is a good way to help people make ends meet, while slowing the flow of the money out of the community.
Social Media
There are existing distributed open source alternatives to social networks. Twitter faces competition from Mastodon. Facebook faces competition from Friendica and Diaspora. Even Youtube faces competition from Peertube.
These services operate as individual pods (instances) for a given community, which can easily be a specific geographic community. These individually managed pods can set their own rules, while still interoperating with the larger FediVerse through the ActivityPub protocol.
These services allow communities to take back control of the platforms that they use to communicate. We can have platforms that exist to connect people, rather than to manipulate the user base.
How WorcShop Fits In
WorcShop is the largest industrial makerspace on the East Coast.
With 52,000 square feet of space and $2M in high end equipment, WorcShop allows paying members to lease space, share skills and training, use equipment, and collaborate on doing the work that they want to accomplish.
We have 3D printing, CNC machines, a wood shop, a metal shop, blacksmiths and work is underway to add a glass making facility.
More than that though, WorcShop is a community. It’s a place where we can go to social, plan and collaborate to improve our individual situations.
This is an environment that needs a jobs board, where people can request work to be completed by skilled workers. This is an environment that gives people an opportunity to learn and grow as individuals.
My role, as Director of Technology, is to build the digital infrastructure to help the WorcShop bring in the membership they need to keep running, and help the members make money by using their skills and resources.
It’s still early at the moment, and money is tight. While I’m confident that the tools and services I build for WorcShop will be of value to other communities who can pay me to help them get set up, in the short term we all have bills to pay.
How Can I Help?
There’s a few ways you can help.
- If you’re local to Worcester, Massachusetts, come join our community. Membership fees are inexpensive, and we would love more people to work with. Our goal is to have WorcShop be primarily funded by membership fees.
- If you’re involved with a Makerspace of your own, please reach out. I’d love to talk about how we can help each other thrive.
- If you’re an investor, the WorcShop needs funding. I am happy to put you in touch with the owner.
- SmolTech needs funding as well, so that I can cover my bills while I work on building the tools to help WorcShop bring in enough revenue to pay me. I have a Patreon set up for small monthly donations, but I’d be open to larger single investors as well if you’d like to reach out.
- I’m starting the process of building the infrastructure, and I’d be happy to connect with people open to helping out with bootstrapping this new Open Source project. I’m currently learning Django on the fly and learning to automate the deployment of Kubernetes on bare metal.
Together, we can change the world.
