# APC Interview. Servelots Story as new member
Draft

### Overview of the organisation
**talk about ourselves, with some details on what we are working on and highlights**

August 15, 2021. Bangalore, India.

Servelots started in 1999 by hoping to solve world's problems using generative programming. The world as seen by this Silicon Valley hammer was a world of Purposeful online Communities (PoCs). As Servelots wove itself with community based intitiatives, Janastu took birth as it's not for profit social tech collective. Janastu literally means "People. Let Be.". This was in contrast to the PoC approach that not only assumed a connected world but also alluded to identifying people with a purpose. The PoC approach identifies technology as just utilitarian. We recognise that the technological prowess of today makes it possible for all (across caste, class or literacy levels) to create, share and archive their own voices for the first time in the evolution of human technology(Internet/Community Networks and Touch Devices are examples). By witnessing this, we expressedly started to indulge in forseeing the inclusion of those who are marginalised by literacy.

We want to build the means for stories -from the uncentered peoples- to be told, retold, preserved, acted upon, built upon - primarily by themselves and especially women.

What does this kind of inclusion look like in practice?
There are two ends of the spectrum of this effort are to
1. Imagine the Internet to make possible for its content to be accessibile to all, especially for the low-literates and
2. facilitate the creation of content by all, especially non-textual content by the low-literate, and hyper-linking such content in a manner akin to the familiar hyper-text.

We have focused on these two and some other inbetweens:
1. "Renarration Web" based on Web Annotations is a model for making content accessible for all,
2. decentralised hyper-media archives, community radio, storytelling, community networks and services are about facilitating creation of content and hyper-media archives, annotations for interlinking archives,
3. 3D reconstruction and mapping to help navigate location information,
4. inclusive Aspiration Networking devices,
5. Crafterspace (a crafts cum maker space) and Anthillhacks events are efforts to bring together a social mix of tech savvy urban and the low-literate rural communities.

We are encouraged by our discoveries of the diversity in our traditional storytelling models. Details at open.janastu.org/projects

### Why did we decide to join APC network

Among our many friends are pastoral networks, free software movements, nomadic storytellers, Working Groups on Internet standards, crafts communities, rural development visionaries and so on. With the APC, we have experienced a network whose technology and community initiatives seek equitable knowledge communities especially with indulgences in the global south.
By joining APC, we indicate our appreciation of the activities and directions that have been and continue to be nurtured over the last few years. This support has continued to nudge us forward towards in our efforts to indulge at the fringes of technolgies that can be inclusive of low-literates. The APC network also works amazingly well as a peer-learning space for friends here and abroad.

### What do you think you can contribute as a member, and what do you expect from APC?

We hope to not only highlight the need to see the marginalised and invisibilised low-literates but also to work together on pushing the networking technologies at the fringes. All of this towards making low-literates first class users of the Internet. Guess we expect APC to not only focus on "connecting the unconnected" to the Internet but also on more nuanced and located ways of connecting those marginalised due to caste, class and literacy.