For twenty years I've dreamed of building software where users truly control their data and how it shows up in their lives. I never could — the scope was too vast. Two more public efforts are Mitch Kapor's Chandler, Google Wave - ambitious projects with real funding that couldn't pull it off.
This is the year AI changes that. I'm building a Collaborative Conducting Environment — a new kind of tool where you and AI work as partners, complementing each other's strengths and covering for each other's weaknesses. It's not about sending the AI off to do your work. It's about working together.
I'm already using my CCE for 100% of my AI software development, not Cursor, not Claude Code, my tool - because for my workflow it's already radically more productive. I could explain what it *is*, but those would be wasted words, as it changes every day, and I can't explain what it will become, because it's a new kind of thing. Every explanation is based on expectations - and that makes them fall short. You have to use it to understand it.
What I can explain is what I believe and why I'm building it.
Memory Safe Software. Now.
Every week, the software you rely on — your browser, your PDF reader, your phone — gets hacked because it's built with tools that let attackers reach into your computer's memory and take control. These aren't rare events. Chrome alone patches hundreds of these vulnerabilities a year. Your bank, your photos, your passwords — can all be stolen because we keep building software the same way we did in 1972. The answer isn't patching faster. It's building software differently so these vulnerabilities don't exist in the first place.
In 2024, our highest office issued a call to action: The White House: Future Software Should Be Memory Safe. I'm answering that call. I am already working in my Collaborative Conducting Environment, well on my way to deliver memory-safe versions of the critical software we all use — a web browser, PDF viewer, image editor, and AI collaboration studio, shipping on all platforms. And I'm doing it by myself. One programmer. Incredible AI leverage. Because I want people to see what AI is truly capable of when you work with it as a partner, instead of sending it off to work alone.
AI-Sovereign Software. Yours.
In the near future, every piece of software and data becomes more powerful when deeply integrated with AI. But that creates a tension. The history of software is locking you in for revenue. As users, none of us want software that captures. We want software that does what we want.
I'm building a configurable AI-embedded platform where you own your data and control your UI — email, messaging, writing, artistic work, coding, everything. Not designed around revenue capture. Designed around you.
The last piece of software you need, because it becomes whatever you need it to be.
How? Collaborative Capitalism.
In 1985, Richard Stallman published a radical vision: users should control their software, not the other way around. The GNU GPL and the open source movement that followed reshaped the industry — but forty years later, the software most people actually use is still proprietary. Windows, macOS, iOS, iMessage, Snapchat, Instagram. Open source won the server room and lost the living room.
Why? Because corporations have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder returns. User sovereignty and revenue capture are fundamentally in tension, and fiduciary duty picks the winner every time.
I want to break that cycle, and the best way I can think of is to hit the source. I'm calling the model Collaborative Capitalism. It means public-benefit corporation structure, bounded revenue, non-predatory billing, and software that serves the person using it — not an earnings call. We will never get software freedom from systems designed around capture. But just releasing the source doesn't magically fix it either. I'm going to fix it by building systems designed, from the technical elements to the business model, around maximizing user value, not shareholder value.
Before AI, this would be wishful thinking at best and corporate suicide at worst. Capitalism is not evil — it's a fitness test and a feedback cycle, and larger entities than me have broken themselves trying to fight it. I love capitalism, I embrace it. At the same time, I believe AI fundamentally changes the economics. When one person can build a software empire, perhaps the empire can be a movement instead of a capture.
http://artificialnecessity.com
..and here is a report pull of my git-hub repos..
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