“Building our own websites, making independent media, and striving for more democratic social networks—I think these are some of the small but crucial things we need to be doing to create alternatives to the monopolistic, billionaire-owned and increasingly authoritarian tech ecosystems currently dominating our lives,” Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, told me. “We still have to figure out how to triumph over extractive tech companies and curtail aggressively toxic social networks that encourage the spread of hateful messages, and to fund and elevate alternatives not in thrall to tech billionaires, but building working models is a necessary and urgent first step.” {read}