Caretakers Tech is a distributed application infrastructure based on shared resources and voluntary cooperation. While it approaches isolated individuals and communities in the beginning, its designed to foster a way of life beyond market and state in the long run. One part of the equally named book is the abstract conception of this infrastructure to support building it through the use of current information technologies.
It is designed to provide an emancipatory mode of re-production between peers in a higher scale. As such, Caretaker Tech opposes the capitalist mode through its pure existence. The idea behind Caretakers Tech is, that it provides complex infrastructure to eneable a modern living without money, but it also aims to foster a new form of live, with long-livign tech and therefore reduce the necessity of such an technical infrastructure later on.
These rather technical parts are embedded in a fictional story set in the beginning of the 22nd century. According an european law, enforced (after some struggle) communities have the right to self-organize public resources as specific goals are met like public interest and fostering declinate of the climate heating. The storeys protagonist, a single mother in her 20s, is a new member of a housing project, which – after years of mismanagement – struggles to loose its independence according to fail the settled goals.
The story especially explores the transition from the way of life, which is beyond market and state, but heavily dependend on technology (the Caretakers Tech), to social spheres inside this frame, in which the infrastructure is not necessary anymore and mankind starts a non-primitive living to its own morals and values. The Protagonist gets in contact with it while living in the project and gets fascinated with Caretakers. Those are kind of a an new caste, emerged mainly out of the children from the early generations, who fought for and lived in self-organized spaces. While the protagonist life and reputation is heavily dependend on the wide-spread Caretaker Tech, those, who are known as Caretakers, actually do not use any tech and some never did.
The books structure is alternating parts of the story, parts of the Caretakers-Tech-Conception, related articles to the topic, published with cultural free licenses and introduction to current technologies, which are options to build Caretakers-Tech-Apllications upon on. The story and the tech-conception are in specifically related, as technlogies, shown in the story, are getting explored in the conception and the conception opens social questions, which are getting dramatized in the story.