Moving to Ghost
A Revolutionary Technologist started as a response to the prompt of what would happen if we built technology from the ethos of bell hooks' "All About Love: New Visions." To radically re-imagine technology as part of an act of love or “the will to extend one’s self to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” felt revolutionary. And I wanted to write this idea into existence.
At that time, I was healing from severe anemia. Basic daily tasks exhausted me. My body had too little spare energy to create a platform fully reflective of my values. So I chose to use Substack. Its easy onboarding helped me get started quickly. Despite Substack's well documented pattern of profiting off neo-Nazi content, the benefits outweighed the amoral stance of the platform.
The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – results from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.Marshall McLuhan, Media Theorist (From Understanding Media)
However, A Revolutionary Technologist is inextricably linked with Substack's politics. Since I started this newsletter, there has been a marked increase in right-wing political violence. Researchers have found a direct correlation between the proliferation of online hate speech with an increase in violence. So the neo-nazi rhetoric Substack's algorithms amplify is having real world effects.
Writing about building technology as an act of love on a platform that promotes violence and abuse is misaligned. While there is no perfect platform, bell hooks reminds us that love is a choice. To love means being just as intentional about the technologies I build as the ones I use. As I reinvest in this newsletter, I'm moving to Ghost.
Moving to Ghost does not fundamentally remake the technology landscape. It's about choice. We will not re-imagine technology as an act of love overnight. Each choice we make, however small, is a practice of extending ourselves to nurture growth. Moving to Ghost is one such choice.
