Assumptions and Goals

The goals of this project are varied, befitting the potential long-term impact of the changes that we see possible.

We believe that for the internet to have the broadest positive impact, everyone using the internet should be able to shape their digital lives. This is not a new idea -- since the first years of the web, "normal people" creating web content has been a part of the web ecosystem. As that ecosystem has grown and evolved, and in particular with the advent of smartphones, the technical and access barriers to creating original content on the internet have grown dramatically. This shift is compounded by new control mechanisms (central appstores), user interface affordance challenges (traditional coding on a phone is impossible), and most striking for individuals without the time and money to learn the "stack" of skills and knowledge required to create and publish new content.

We hope to investigate possible remediations of this staggering bias which could help make it easier for non-programmers, especially in markets where phones will be the primary access point to the internet, to access, modify and share locally relevant content right on their phones. We do not expect to provide someone with no programming skills the same generative power to create arbitrarily complex apps. Instead, we will identify specific use cases, categories of remixable/reconfigurable apps which, while likely limited, can provide a) a psychologically powerful feeling of agency, b) some direct utility, c) a glimpse that they can contribute meaningfully to their local internet life, and possibly entice them to learn and do more.

While many of us have been exploring related questions with the Mozilla Appmaker project, we do not assume that any of the details of that project are necessarily useful here. That project's initial design was made for people in developed countries with access to high-bandwidth desktop computers, and we are well aware that many of the decisions made for that version of Appmaker are inappropriate in a mobile-only environment.

To find out more how we hope to tackle these goals, read our approach model.