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Beyond Big Tech: Building Alternative Futures for Personal Data and Infrastructure

Beyond Big Tech: Building Alternative Futures for Personal Data and Infrastructure

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Course Logistics

Enrollment Deadline:
September 24, 2026

Dates:
October 5 – November 12, 2026
(Six weeks of instruction online, plus a class orientation meeting on October 1)

Synchronous Node Meetings:
Thursdays, October 1 – November 12, 2026
(Includes the first-week orientation meeting)

Weekly Asynchronous Content:
Posted Mondays

Format:
Online, hybrid asynchronous and synchronous

Weekly Commitment:
Approximately 2 hours of asynchronous video instruction
1 hour of synchronous discussion and facilitation

Cost:
$750
Pay in one payment or two payments of $375

Experience Level:
Beginner. Basic computer proficiency is expected, but no coding or other technical knowledge is required.

Scholarships:
Diversity Scholarships are available.
Apply by September 17, 2026.
Scholarship notifications will be sent within one week after the deadline.

Synchronous Node Times

Participants commit to joining one of two sections when they sign up for the course. Please check your local time zone when selecting the Node that works best for you.

Node 1
8 – 9 AM PT
(11 AM – 12 PM ET)

Enroll in Node 1

Node 2
6 – 7 PM PT
(9 – 10 PM ET)

Enroll in Node 2

Course Requirements

Participants need a computer with an internet connection, microphone, and camera for synchronous sessions.

Some optional hands-on sessions may require additional materials. Participants can opt out of any hands-on sessions they do not wish to complete.

Additional materials will be needed for students who wish to build along with the technical demonstrations during Week 6. More information will be provided before that session.

Additional Information

  • No refunds or exchanges
  • View our FAQ here
  • For questions about the course, payment plans, or scholarships, contact [email protected]

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

  • Create and manage community networks for resilience, from identifying criteria and roles to implementing self-hosted community tools
  • Use decentralized networks for organizing, encrypting, verifying, archiving, and preserving digital files in galleries and cultural institutions
  • Practice navigating the command line and other technological essentials for exploring self-hosting and decentralized web technologies
  • Discuss different approaches to the design and implementation of distributed web systems, including blockchain, smart contracts, NFTs, and block explorers, and their social impacts
  • Discern between the promises and limitations of the decentralized web through historical analysis of the vision, implementation, and impact of the World Wide Web using critical and decolonial approaches and methodologies

Course Outline

Week 0: Thursday, October 1, 2026
Orientation
Meet and greet with your Node.

Week 1: October 5 – 8, 2026
Networks in Culture and Tech
DWeb foundations.

Week 2: October 12 – 15, 2026
Values and Principles in Decentralized Governance
Command Line for Artists.

Week 3: October 19 – 22, 2026
Critical DWeb Art Projects + Practices

Week 4: October 26 – 29, 2026
Archives & Data Sovereignty

Week 5: November 2 – 5, 2026
DWeb Stewardship
A collective compass for sovereignty, power, and worldbuilding.

Week 6: November 9 – 12, 2026
Introduction to Self-Hosting with YunoHost

Technologies Used

  • Command Line (Bash)
  • MetaMask
  • Blockchain
  • Smart contracts
  • NFTs
  • IPFS
  • YunoHost

Who This Is For

  • Artists
  • Designers
  • Archivists
  • Gallerists
  • Arts professionals
  • Artist rights advocates
  • Community organizers
  • Creative professionals

Methodologies

  • Case studies
  • Hands-on practice with decentralized web technologies
  • Technical literacy
  • A shared Discord channel for ongoing discussion, community building, and critique

About Scholarships

Scholarships are awarded based on available capacity and a review process overseen by the Gray Area team to prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, and need. This approach helps ensure that people who are passionate, curious, and dedicated to the values of the decentralized web can participate in this course and Gray Area’s other educational offerings.

Our Financial Model

Tuition fees, alongside ticket sales, grants, donations, and memberships, constitute a major portion of the financial support for our organization. These contributions enable us to compensate the artists and instructors who are essential to our programs.

We strongly encourage those who can afford the tuition to pay for the course. By enrolling, you’re not just investing in your education; you’re supporting the broader Gray Area ecosystem and helping us offer more scholarships and reduce barriers to entry.

Tuition Structure

$750 for 12 hours of asynchronous video instruction and seven hours of live facilitation, including a class orientation meeting before the course begins. Participants also receive access to instructors and facilitators for office hours and class discussions on Discord.

Payment can be made in one installment of $750 or two installments of $375.

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Instructor(s)
Ayana Zaire Cotton
Educator, Co-Designer

Ayana Zaire Cotton is a cultural worker from Prince George’s County, Maryland. During a biotechnology residency at Ginkgo Bioworks she wrote the non-linear speculative fiction novella Cykofa: The Seeda Origin Story in collaboration with creative writing software she engineered at the Recurse Center. Ayana is the founder and steward of Seeda School, named after Seeda, the non-binary biotechnologist living in Cykofa, an abolitionist community seeded by black feminist ancestors. Seeda School houses a community of practice for black feminist worldbuilding and creative actualization. Through Seeda School they publish a newsletter and podcast For the Worldbuilders. Inside the ecosystem of their practice Ayana braids storytelling, engineering, and interspecies collaboration to engage our collective imagination around the worlds we need in the future we desire.

mai ishikawa sutton
Educator, Co-Designer

mai is an organizer and writer focused on the digital commons and other intersections between network technologies and the solidarity economy. They are a co-founder and editor of COMPOST, an online magazine about and for the digital commons. They are a Senior Organizer with DWeb and a Digital Commons Fellow with Commons Network.

Sarah Friend
Educator, Co-Designer

Sarah Friend is an artist, researcher, and software developer from Canada and currently based in Berlin, Germany. Her work explores games, economics, and the self via engagement with emerging technology. As an artist, she has exhibited at and worked with MoMA (NYC), SculptureCenter (NYC), HEK (Basel), Haus der Kunst (Munich), ArtScience Museum (Singapore), Someset House (London), and Rhizome (NYC) among others.  She has taught at the graduate and undergraduate level, as well as various para-academic spaces, including HEAD Genevé (Switzerland), Rupert (Lithuania), La Plateforme (France), the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg (Germany), and Gray Area (San Francisco, USA). In 2022, she was a visiting professor at The Cooper Union in New York. 

Sarah Grant
Educator, Co-Designer

Sarah Grant is an American media artist and educator based in Berlin. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art from UC Davis and a Masters of Professional Studies in Media Arts from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Her practice engages with the electromagnetic spectrum and telecommunication networks as artistic material, social habitat, and political landscape. With a focus on radioart and computer networking, she researches and develops artworks as educational tools and workshops that demystify computer networking and radio technology.

Nasir Anthony Montalvo

Nasir Anthony Montalvo (b. 1999) is an experimental memory worker. Montalvo’s work challenges the erasure of Black and queer people from our historical record through archival study, obsolete and emergent technology, popular education, and the written word. Montalvo’s art and archival research has been exhibited locally and nationally, published in Syllabus, Sixty Inches From Center, The Advocate, and KC Studio, and collected by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Their work is referenced in curricula at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Pomona College. Montalvo is founder of {B/qKC}: a community archive of Black queer midwestern history, and has been awarded fellowships with The Opportunity Agenda, Diaspora Solidarities Lab, and Gray Area in addition to their 2024-2026 studio residency at Charlotte Street. Montalvo is queer, Afro-Boricua, and from Kissimmee, Florida. They received their BS in Business & Technology from Stevens Institute of Technology.