The tech industry has been accelerating the growing gap between the rich and poor with algorithmic precision. Silicon Valley tech has been fueling gentrification in the Bay Area while contract workers make up a majority of their workforce, while further still providing solutions to help automate people's jobs. The tech attitude to progress ("disruption") comes at a steep price: livelihoods at the bottom are being disrupted in order to generate more wealth for those on top.
Technology rules our lives and, for better or for worse, those who provide it receive the biggest cut. Some may raise the notion that that's completely fair, "If I change how the world works in big ways, I can become powerful." However, exploitation and abject wealth go hand in hand. When wielded by the underprivileged, technology is powerful: empowering people by increasing access to opportunities for upward mobility and provide tools for equalizing the playing field. But wielded by those seeking incredible wealth, technology is exploitative: automating and surveiling your livelihood so they can sell you more. It is time to rethink our relationship with technology. It is time to reconsider the societal impacts of our progressive web apps. It is time to reimagine the notion: "We can make small changes to the world and make someone else a little more powerful."
Subvertech is a catch-all term to describe clever applications of technology that seek to uplift communities and reduce inequality. There are countless, amazing people scattered around the world working on projects that rarely receive recognition for the work that they do but have lasting impacts in the communities that they serve. This website is a tribute to their effort by increasing their visibility in hopes that you consider contributing to them yourself.
Subvertech (for now) is a Github repository of projects that embody the spirit of reducing income inequality that you can support or contribute to. This website is dynamically loaded with new contributions to the repository. There's also a page for scoping out future projects that "subvert" the way we think about what tech can do to reduce income inequality.
If you'd like to add a project to showcase, go to the main github repository, github.com/subvertech/contribute, find the markdown file that you'd like to add to, and press the pencil icon to begin editing. Any new markdown (i.e. myproject.md) file that you create will be added as a page to the site as: `subvertech.org/myproject`.
This website is a simple platform for you to tell the world about cool projects and propose a few of your own. I would love to see Subvertech grow into a platform for people to launch inequality-fighting projects on a shared network of cheap computers. I imagine people being able to share the burden of hosting and computation but also be able to choose what projects they'd like to host on their machines. But for now, let's stick with what we have!
Humans are fundamentally flawed. Every institution has done something that they aren't proud of. Sometimes a project is funded through morally questionable sources. Doing "good" in this world is messy and complicated. Of course, one should not ignore these things simply because a project's mission is well-intentioned: often, it's impact will say something completely different. But Subvertech is analog: every project with the goal of reducing inequality has some merit and deserve credit where credit is due. Talk about what these projects do wrong to reflect on how we can do things better.