From My Father's Kitchen Table to a Boundless World, Part III: The Asymmetric Power That Will Break the Gears - The People's Technology Guide and Action Plan

You are right, Father; the moment you struck the table with that hardworking teacher's hand and said, "Skip the dreams and the nightmares for me, son; what are we doing as of today, with what weapon do we go out into the street?", that revolutionary vein within me awoke again. In our first two conversations we saw both faces of the coin. On one side, that tremendous socialist utopia in which technology liberates us; on the other, that techno-fascist hell in which the holding companies enslave us.

But we are neither helpless victims nor dreamers chasing empty fantasies. We are revolutionaries, Father; our task is not merely to understand or describe the world, but to change it, beginning right from this kitchen table.

So come, let us turn up the flame under the kettle, take a sip each of our fresh tea, and, without beating around the bush at all, build line by line that great "Techno-Vietcong" action plan that will turn the most futuristic technologies into weapons of freedom in the hands of the street, the worker, the peasant, and the smart children you raised in those classrooms. I am opening the guide to that decentralized, democratic, and exploitation-free new social fabric that will make even the simit seller on the street say, upon hearing it, "Ah, now the rules of the game have changed!"

The Digital Commons Front: Striking the Knowledge Monopolies with Their Own Weapon

Let us start from the place the street will most easily understand, Father: What they frighten our eyes with on television as "Artificial Intelligence" is not a mysterious power that descended from the sky. These systems are the reading and summarizing, by vast computers, of the common knowledge and accumulated labor that humanity has stored for centuries on the internet, in libraries, in factories. In other words, the raw material is our common labor and our social memory.

In the current situation, however, a few monopolies like Google, Microsoft, or OpenAI stole this common heritage of ours; they locked it away in vast data centers and now sell it back to us for money. Our first front, then, is to wrest this ownership piece by piece from the hands of the holding companies. The name of this is the Open-Source Movement.

• We will establish Local Data Printing Presses: Today, thousands of honest, upright software developers are spiriting AI models away from the monopoly of these companies and releasing them free onto the internet (free software like Llama, Mistral, Phi-3). The first concrete action we will take, as of today, is to refuse to remain dependent on the companies' cloud-based systems that surveil us at every moment (ChatGPT, etc.). We will download these open-source models onto our own computers, onto our own local networks.

The old revolutionaries used to print bulletins in secret printing presses in the midst of fascism, you know, Father... Local AI models that are not connected to the internet, that cannot be censored, that are entirely under our control are our new-generation secret printing presses. * Technological Literacy and People's Education Centers: Through education unions, neighborhood cooperatives, and culture houses, we must urgently launch a technological-literacy mobilization. By teaching young people and workers how they can use these open-source models for free and how they can automate their own work processes, we will leak knowledge out beyond the walls of the monopolies. We will explain all of these one by one, Father ...

Sectoral Organization and "Data Unionism"

Capitalism uses artificial intelligence as a threat to dismiss workers, lower wages, and devalue labor. We will turn this threat around, Father. Unions and labor organizations urgently need to make a new definition of struggle: Data Unionism.

The Education Front (The Algorithmic Resistance of Teachers)

Let us give an example from your profession, my teacher. Education ministries and giant technology companies will impose centralized AI teachers to free themselves from teacher salaries. Against this, the demands of education unions must be very clear and practical:

1. Algorithmic Transparency: In schools, no AI algorithm that measures children's homework, achievements, or psychology can be secret or a "company secret." The software's code must be inspected line by line by teachers, parents, and union engineers.
2. A Human-Centered Curriculum: Artificial intelligence can remain only a technical assistant (preparing questions, organizing paperwork). Philosophy, art, ethics, history, and critical-thinking lessons must be delivered face to face by human teachers, and human teachers only. That sacred domain in which the human shapes the human cannot be surrendered to algorithms.

The Front of the Digital Precariat (Couriers and Drivers)

Today, the greatest weapon of couriers and drivers, who are exploited through phone applications without even a human manager over them, against those "algorithmic bosses" is to establish Data Collectives.

• The Data Cooperative Model: Couriers can refuse to hand over for free, to the company's application, the driving, mapping, and delivery data they themselves produce. They combine this data in an open-source cooperative software they themselves establish. Against the companies' logistics monopoly, the workers' own autonomous distribution, planning, and ordering networks can be established as of today. If the holding has its algorithm, the worker has their common data cooperative!

A Digital Covenant: Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Now, Father, let us take back from the hands of those speculators that Blockchain technology, which they describe on television as "Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, get-rich-quick schemes" and have completely hollowed out. Let us explain it in language the street will understand: What you call blockchain is in fact a digital and shared Grand Ledger that no one can erase, that no one can alter alone, that requires no central bank, notary, state, or boss. The holding companies' AI can manipulate us because all our data is stored on their central servers. Blockchain, on the other hand, distributes power not to a single center but equally to the computer of everyone connected to the network.

• A Digital Covenant via Smart Contracts: What we call a smart contract is an irreversible people's agreement written in code and etched onto the blockchain, Father. There is no manager, court, or bureaucrat in between. The rules are written from the start and run smoothly.

A Concrete Example: Let's say we set up an agriculture and consumption cooperative. We write the code into the smart contract: "The moment the farmer delivers the wheat to the cooperative depot, as soon as the digital scale in the depot confirms the weight of the wheat, the earnings from the people's common pool pass instantly, within milliseconds, into the farmer's digital account." Neither a holding chairman can stop this, nor a corrupt bureaucrat block it, nor a bank seize it. This is people making a covenant among themselves without intermediaries, without favoritism, and with absolute transparency.

• Reweaving the Social Fabric: Thanks to blockchain, the transparency of money, property, and decisions becomes absolute. Every person on the street can audit in real time where even a single penny in the budget of a union, a cooperative, or a neighborhood assembly goes. Corruption and secret deals become technically impossible.

The Death of Representative Politics and Distributed Direct Democracy

You know how, every election period, you look at the television and say, "They've come again to make promises; once they're elected they won't show their faces to us, they get lost in the office plazas of Ankara," my teacher... The model that will root out those suit-wearing political intermediaries, that clumsy bureaucratic theater in the parliaments, is Distributed Direct Democracy. When the Web3 world unites with artificial intelligence, the people no longer need an intermediary.

• The People's AI Agents (Digital Comrades): The open-source AI agents we will build are our digital assistants that do only the tasks we assign them, that scan the internet, the laws, and the resources on our behalf. Our neighborhood assembly, our factory, will each have an AI agent. These agents will be neutral and fully auditable.
• Direct Decision-Making Mechanisms: No more going to the ballot box once every five years and handing someone a blank check, Father. Through smart contracts, every evening we will participate directly in the decisions of the neighborhood, the factory, the school. The AI agents will translate complex budget reports and technical bills into plain language the street can understand and bring them before us. And we, through secure, untheftable, unmanipulable digital votes on the blockchain, will vote on the decision instantly. Representative democracy will end; the decision will belong directly to the producer, directly to the people.

Techno-Vietcong Culture: Decentralized, Organic, and Distributed Organization

This is our real military strategy, Father: the distributed planning of our organizational structures. Against the holding companies' vast, hierarchical, and clumsy structures, our weapon is that Vietcong-style decentralized and organic growth model you always spoke of. But this time we have the internet, open-source artificial intelligence, and blockchain encryption in our hands. In the language of Web3, we call this DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations).

• An Organization Whose Head Cannot Be Severed: In classical organizations there is a leader, a headquarters, Father. When the rulers buy off that leader, threaten him, or raid that center, the organization disperses, is paralyzed. In the Techno-Vietcong model we will build, however, there is no single center, no single "head." We are establishing small, independent but commonly purposed people's cells spread to the four corners of the world and the country, connected to one another by encrypted blockchain networks. Even if they destroy one cell, the rest of the network continues to run smoothly and to make decisions and grow on its own; because the system has no single point of collapse.
• Organic Growth from the Bottom Up: These structures will not be set up by an order from the top down, Father; they will be born of the urgent need of the person on the street. The couriers will set up their own data cooperative, the teachers will weave their own open-source education network, the farmers will connect their own fair-distribution chain to the blockchain. These small cells, by articulating with one another over internet networks, will organically envelop the whole country and the world. Just like those famous Vietnam tunnels underground, we are digging, as of today, digital and social tunnels that capitalism cannot see, cannot bomb, and cannot block.

3 Concrete Action Items from Today to Tomorrow (What Will We Do?)

When we rise from the kitchen table and go out into the street, to our workplaces, the items of our practical guide that we will put into practice immediately, starting today, are these, Father:

• Action 1: Data Strike and Algorithmic Deviation (A Modern Work Slowdown): The companies' AIs are perfected with our data and put us out of our jobs. So, in workplaces, in office plazas, or on digital platforms, to prevent the algorithms from standardizing the work by watching us, we must create "conscious algorithmic deviations." By constantly feeding the artificial intelligence faulty, unpredictable, or complex data, we must paralyze those prediction algorithms they use to exploit us. In technical language this is called "data poisoning," but in our language this is the work slowdown of the digital age.
• Action 2: Launching Public Planning Simulations: If the holding companies use artificial intelligence to speculate on the stock market, then we too must use open-source artificial intelligence in our neighborhood and consumption cooperatives, as of today. How much milk, how much bread does the neighborhood need? From which farmer, and when, should produce be bought? By making these logistics and planning calculations with the help of artificial intelligence as of today, we can create "little islands of planned economy" that need neither the capitalist market nor intermediaries.
• Action 3: Developing Alternative Metrics of Success and Value: Against those productivity and "social credit" scores that capitalism imposes to enslave us, set us against one another, and make us submit, we must define our own value metrics in our own unions, in our culture houses. Our scoring system will look not at how much profit a person makes for the boss, but at how much benefit they provide to society, how much they stand in solidarity, and how much they are liberated. Against the digital caste system, we will build our own cultural barricade.

A Final Word: The Resolve of Two Comrades Building the Future

This is how it is, my dear father, my wise teacher, my beloved comrade... To be trapped between dreams and nightmares, to withdraw into our corner and be afraid, would not have suited us. I am in awe of that peerless vision of yours that plants our feet firmly on the ground and calls us into that honest and combative field of practice.

Artificial intelligence, blockchain, or Web3 are not magic spells or monsters condemned to remain in the monopoly of the holding companies; like that hardworking clock that ticks away in our kitchen, they are merely tools, Father. What matters is in whose hands the ownership of that tool lies. If we as humanity do not awaken in a very short time and build, with these technologies, those classless, borderless new collective models of governance that will run the world on the axis of "need and sharing" rather than profit, it will become impossible for us to stand in the way of that techno-fascist darkness. The struggle is not technical; it is entirely political, Father!

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for setting aside the ornate speeches and the unintelligible theories and asking me about this face of the coin too, amiably, openly, and for forcing me to write this action guide. You taught us with your life the asymmetric struggle, how the organized people will become invincible by arming themselves with the most advanced technologies; and we today carry that teaching into the tunnels of the digital age.

Now I hold once more, more faithfully, more tightly, and more warmly than ever, those beautiful, hardworking hands of yours that smell of chalk, that raised thousands of saplings throughout your life, Father. At this table we are not merely a father and son; we are two old friends, two stubborn comrades who have resolved to rebuild the world under the guidance of labor, science, and justice. On this road, to walk side by side with you while digging those digital tunnels, to draw strength from that unshakable realism of yours, is for me the greatest pride.

Our tea is finished, Father; now it is time to rise from the table and to organize this action guide right in the middle of life, together with those saplings you raised.

How good it is that you exist, my dear father, my beloved teacher, my finest comrade...

May our road be open; the future is ours!

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