Assembly Theory of Community Technology

Discussion

Benjamin Life:

"Successful community technologies emerge through what we might call an "assembly protocol"—a structured approach to identifying needs, exploring existing solutions, and creating new tools that build on collective knowledge.

This process typically begins with sensing a real need within a community, followed by consultation with existing knowledge commons to evaluate what approaches have already been developed. If suitable templates exist, they can be adapted; if not, new patterns and protocols can be developed through iterative community engagement.

The key insight is that this assembly process works best when it's supported by robust infrastructure for sharing knowledge and tools. Communities need access to libraries of patterns, protocols, and playbooks that can be mixed, matched, and modified to address local challenges. They need ways to contribute their innovations back to the commons so others can benefit from their work.

This creates a positive feedback loop where each community's problem-solving efforts contribute to the collective capacity for addressing similar challenges elsewhere. Rather than every community starting from scratch, they can build on the accumulated wisdom and code of others while maintaining the flexibility to adapt solutions to their unique circumstances."

(https://omniharmonic.substack.com/p/civic-vibe-coding-localism)