the craft dimension of soft stack ecology: simple, repairable, regenerative systems. the single-file html page, the shell script with no dependencies, the mimeograph drum, the letterpress block.

i insist that the means of production should be legible to me. a tool i cannot open is a tool that owns me.

soft circuits break gracefully, can be fixed with what's on hand, and don't require their author to maintain them forever. they are legible to others and don't depend on a platform surviving.

the opposite of a clever system.