Folk Tech x Protopian Prize - Storytelling Workshop + Connection Call -May 2026!

​Folk Tech is a solidarity-based movement among designers, developers, and people in communities who want digital technology that supports their daily life and interdependence without the extraction, exploitation, or surveillance found in most proprietary technology today.

​​In Silicon Valley, people are “consumers” and “users.” We resist a narrative that turns people into subjects of a technocracy. With Folk Tech, we’re all just folks.

​The Protopian Prize is a fiction contest that asks what we can envision as people working toward liberatory futures, meeting obstacles, and making real change. “Protopian”—a word coined by Kevin Kelly, one of the contest's judges—means an achievable, optimistic future characterized by continuous, incremental progress rather than revolutionary leaps or a static, perfect state. Protopian stories imagine a future that is neither flawless nor catastrophic, but instead workably better than today. It’s about plausible progress rather than perfection or collapse.

​Joining us from Protopian Prize will be Karl Schroeder, a Toronto-based science fiction writer and futurist with a degree in Strategic Foresight and Innovation and 12 published novels.

​In this event, we'll imagine the world as it might be if Folk Tech principles infused our technology. We'll create some collaborative stories and explore different modes of storytelling. Stories are perhaps the most powerful technology created by humans, and they can be used as weapons as well as guides. We'll talk about how stories can change the way we think and how to use our stories to support our work,

​We'll also have space for shareouts on projects, and time to connect.

​We're also working on a project to bring designers into open-source corporate tech alternatives to make these tools more viable for our communities. Interested in being part of that? Complete this form.

​Got ideas for future meetings? Please share. See you soon!