Technology

Overview

Technology is one of five pillars—along with Social, Economics, Governance, and Creativity—that ANANSI leans on when considering its interdisciplinary approach to decentralization. The collective views technology as a key component of liberatory practice, especially given that the current ruling class—the vectoralist class—exerts power primarily through control over data and the platforms through which that data moves.

ANANSI believes that in order to bring about meaningful political and economic change, collectives and individuals must engage critically with technology and become active participants in shaping, owning, and maintaining their digital environments. However, technology is not seen as inherently liberatory. The collective draws on Kranzberg’s third law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” For ANANSI, technology is a means to a liberatory end—not the end itself.

Council

ANANSI maintains a fluid and participatory Technology Council. Membership is open, and individuals may come and go based on interest, availability, and expertise. The council is accountable to the larger collective and seeks consent for major decisions that impact the group—such as the adoption of a new tool that may replace one already in use.

Day-to-day responsibilities, including maintenance and minor upgrades, are handled more autonomously by the council. Nonetheless, the council aims to work transparently and welcomes feedback from all collective members. Large decisions are typically discussed using Loomio and during live meetings, while ongoing dialogue happens primarily via Matrix.

Tech Council Members

The following individuals have contributed significantly to the collective’s technological infrastructure:

• Jabez – Specializes in the installation and troubleshooting of new tools and platforms.
• Kadallah – Supports service maintenance and contributes to long-term strategic planning.
• Ondieki – Helped build an iteration of the collective’s website and serves as an audio technician, especially for tele-performances.
• Nardja – A pioneering audio engineer who has led most of the collective’s Conflux technology experiments.

Philosophy

ANANSI approaches technology not as a neutral tool but as a deeply political terrain shaped by, and shaping, power. Informed by a range of critical traditions—including Afro-socialism, media theory, and post-capitalist thought—the collective develops and deploys technology as part of a broader struggle for liberation.

The collective operates from the understanding, echoed by Kranzberg’s third law, that “technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” Today’s digital infrastructure is largely shaped by a vectoralist class, whose control over platforms and data allows them to define social relations, economic flows, and even the imagination of what is possible. This form of domination, which exceeds traditional capitalism, relies not just on ownership of means of production, but ownership of of the vectors by which information flows.

Faced with the false inevitability of capitalist realism, ANANSI asserts that other worlds are possible—but they must be actively constructed. Drawing on Pan-African principles like ujamaa, ubuntu, and kujichagulia (self-determination), our vision of technology is grounded in relationality, communal care, and material autonomy. We reject both the techno-solutionism of Silicon Valley and the fatalism that renders resistance futile.

The collective is inspired by movements that prioritize democratic ownership of infrastructure, and actively experiments with alternative governance models such as DisCOs and governable digital communities. In doing so, we challenge extractive platform capitalism by building and stewarding tools that reflect our values, not just our desires.

Our orientation is also shaped by a historical awareness that technologies—especially data technologies—have long been used as instruments of racialized control. As such, liberatory tech practice must include an ongoing process of decolonization and a refusal to replicate existing systems of hierarchy, surveillance, or exclusion.

Rather than pursuing individual sovereignty alone, ANANSI emphasizes communal technological self-determination: the right and ability of communities to collectively own, manage, and modify the tools they depend on. This is not just a technical question but a cultural, spiritual, and political one.

Homestack

The Homestack refers to ANANSI’s self-hosted digital infrastructure: a curated stack of interoperable tools deployed and maintained by and for the community. It is a digital manifestation of the Commons — the shared resources, responsibilities, and governance that sustain collective life.

Unlike conventional self-hosting, which often emphasizes individual autonomy or technical experimentation, the Homestack is grounded in communal interdependence. It is explicitly not about scaling up to mass usage, but rather tailoring and stewarding infrastructure to serve a specific collective’s needs. It provides a stable homespace that integrates essential aspects of communal life: communication (Matrix), decision-making (Loomio), creative collaboration (Funkwhale), documentation (MediaWiki), and administration (YunoHost).

The Homestack exists as a shield and anchor within a hostile virtual landscape — a landscape where surveillance, platform enclosures, and digital precarity are pervasive. By maintaining its own infrastructure, ANANSI ensures that community members can engage with technology on their own terms, with real participation in its governance, even if they lack the technical expertise to maintain servers themselves. The Homestack enacts a shared stewardship model, balancing the autonomy of experienced technologists with collective decision-making mechanisms open to all members. Ideally, responsibility is distributed across the community based on interest and availability, without requiring technical uniformity — while still nurturing techno-political literacy.

The stack is currently maintained across a hybrid infrastructure: some services are hosted on a physical machine, while others — such as Loomio and Matrix — run on DigitalOcean to ensure persistent uptime and mitigate the effects of power or bandwidth instability. ANANSI eventually plans to adopt a distributed model inspired by the Solar Protocol project.

YunoHost serves as the backbone of the Homestack’s deployment architecture. Its emphasis on ease-of-use and modular installation makes it a critical tool for demystifying self-hosting, reducing reliance on expert-only workflows, and ensuring transparency for community members without advanced technical skills.

While ANANSI’s current Homestack includes Loomio, Matrix, MediaWiki, and YunoHost, future plans include expanding into creative infrastructure with Funkwhale and federating with aligned collectives to cultivate a resilient, interoperable digital ecosystem. Notably, ANANSI’s approach to federation is pedagogical rather than extractive: its Funkwhale instance is being developed not only for internal use, but to teach others how to build and federate their own, ensuring a reciprocal and decolonial model of interdependence.

In sum, the Homestack is a key infrastructural expression of ANANSI’s philosophy: that digital tools should be governed by those who use them, integrated into the rhythms of communal life, and anchored in shared values of solidarity, autonomy, and care.

Tools

Communication

• Matrix – Primary platform for day-to-day communication
• Loomio – Used for extended discussions and decision-making
• Gather – Used for regular meetings and larger events
• Jitsi – Backup platform for live video meetings

Praxis Management

• Notion – Central hub for project planning and documentation
• Loomio – Platform for consent-based governance
• MediaWiki – Used to publicly document collective processes and output

Creativity

• Funkwhale – Hosted platform for music distribution
• BandLab, Soundation, Muse Sessions, SonoBus – Collaborative music production tools used during Confluxes
• Figma – For real-time visual collaboration
• Calibre-web – Shared digital library for ebooks and documents

Hosting & Infrastructure

ANANSI currently relies on DigitalOcean for most of its hosting needs, but aims to transition toward more complete self-hosting. A prior self-hosted server in Kenya was retired, and a new server based in the United States is currently being configured and is expected to be operational by August.