Welcome to Smalltown, a Civic Space Online - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst

Examples like Community Memory and BEV captured an optimistic vision of how computers and networks can assist in “placemaking”: the open, participatory process of shaping a physical space through the dreams and histories of the people who live there. In these early infrastructures, every graze with the machine reinforced the importance of the peopl... See more

Digital spaces are an urban geography in their own right. The trouble is, most of our online spaces are monopolized by entities ultimately trying to sell us a product. As a result, those spaces similarly embody the same Orwellian doublespeak that characterized the Soviet era. We are told we can use them for building connection and community, but we... See more