Space Cadets Waypoint: Building Media Power

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written five essay‑style blog posts that loosely form an arc. Thus far the arc has been an exploration of why the left keeps losing the narrative war to the far right from a strategic and structural point of view. From there, extrapolating what the political left needs to do to create a new media landscape that will counter the far right propaganda machine.

This note is a waypoint to mark our current position in this arc so we can orient to what's ahead. As I write to figure out what's next for me (my LinkedIn btw), I hope that sharing publicly will help other technologists, people who work in media, and activists to situate themselves in the present political moment as well.

One of my aims is to offer this Space Cadets website as a home for a politically informed community of tech and media activists to learn and create together. What this looks like depends on who shows up. I'm testing format here. Some posts will be short "Waypoints" like this; others deeper dives or shared toolkits. The format follows what serves the work and who is in the room. Already, writing publicly has led to conversations with others wrestling with the same questions.

Most conversations so far are with software developers who see the role of technology in perpetuating power imbalances and want to work on projects that shift them. My post Web Browser, AI, and the Politics of Media Power struck a chord because of a shared instinct: browser development can open the door for systemic change. The question is how. We need experiments to test this instinct. Just as important, we need distribution channels for these experiments to invite broader participation in building new ways of interacting online. The connection between protocol-level innovation and countering fascism is real and finding the narratives that make this tangible is part of the task ahead.

I’d love to hear from more people who work in media: researchers, journalists (traditional and tiktokers), and the organizations that support them. This isn’t a single-lane problem. Developers stall when experiments lack distribution. Media hits walls when algorithms stacked against them bury stories. Organizers lack tools for safe and effective coordination. Funders struggle to unlock systemic leverage with their big bets. These are interconnected issues.

So if you’ve been reading along and any of this resonates, please reach out! We need to get technologists, media makers, organizers, and funders to figure out how we connect the dots on a common playbook, and I'd like to learn more about who is doing the various parts of this work.

I’m not sure yet how to narratively connect browser innovation with the larger work of countering far right media dominance, but I know the answer won’t come from movement technologists working in isolation and too often sharing their work into the void. It will come from communities with aligned values and diverse skills learning and building together.

What I’ve been doing here is mapping pieces of the puzzle: tracing how power moves through media, where the left keeps losing ground, and where leverage for change might lie. This post is a waypoint on that map. Some stops are essays, others quick notes and link digests, some may become toolkits to help others navigate the terrain. The point is to make the map public and build it in conversation. From here, I’ll turn to the next stretch: outlining the kinds of work technologists can take up, and how that work connects with media, organizing, funding, and culture to build the narrative power needed to counter the far right.

If you want to talk, you can DM me on Signal, Bluesky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn. Subscribe below to get these posts in newsletter form and stay in orbit 🚀