DL 417
Building Capacity: From Analysis to Action
Published: January 19, 2026 β’ π§ Newsletter
Hey all. Welcome to 2026. A lot has happened since we last connected, and I'm ready to share what we've been building.
If you've found value in these issues, subscribe here or support me here on Ko-fi.
π Key Takeaways
- From Documentation to Capacity: After years of critical analysis, we're building infrastructure for collective response through InitiatED and the Signpost Sessions
- Continuity, Not Pivot: This work extends the newsletter's evolution from TLDR (staying informed) to Digitally Literate (critical analysis) to capacity-building (agency and action)
- Knowledge as Infrastructure: The newsletter archive becomes a digital gardenβan interconnected system for tracing patterns across years rather than consuming content chronologically
- Community Over Platforms: The Signpost Sessions create space for shared witnessing, reflection, and action without the extraction model of corporate tools
- Accessible Autonomy: From Signal tutorials to homelab documentation to ungrading frameworks, the work makes digital sovereignty approachable
π News and Updates
InitiatED
Almost two years ago, I took over as Director of The Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age. I spent that time listening, learning, and asking what meaningful alternatives might look like when institutional systems abandon their stated values under pressure.
The answer wasn't another platform or set of tools. It was InitiatED - a collective focused on building community capacity for digital autonomy.
If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, this focus isn't new. We started with TLDR to help people stay on top of what was happening across tech, education, and literacy. As the landscape grew more complex, we moved to Digitally Literate. Recognizing that keeping up wasn't enough anymore. We needed deeper analysis, ways to distinguish signal from noise, frameworks to understand the patterns beneath the headlines.
Now, as systems continue to fracture and abandon their stated values, I'm thinking more about digital and data sovereignty. Not just documenting what's happening, but building the capacity to respond. And I think you should be too.
InitiatED isn't about delivering solutions from above. It's about working alongside people to develop the capabilities that corporate systems promise but consistently fail to provide. As with all my teaching and outreach, I'm trying to make this approachable and accessible.
If you've been following this path, wondering what form of digital literacy we should actually be focusing on in our lives, looking for ways to move from understanding to agency, this community is for you.
Signpost Sessions
Our first major initiative is the Signpost Sessions - a six-month learning community designed to help us see clearly, think together, and build capacity for what comes next.
This isn't a course or webinar. It's a shared space to slow down, notice what's actually happening in our lives, and figure out how to respond. We're moving through three themes this spring: See (witnessing without judgment), Sense (exploring how observations land in us), and Show (turning awareness into action).
You can participate as a listener, a storyteller, or a collaborator. There's no expectation that you do everything. We gather in Signal for day-to-day conversation and Jitsi for occasional video calls. Your stories become signposts. Small markers that help others navigate their own paths.
Getting started:
- Read the full vision: Welcome to the Signpost Sessions
- Understand our gathering principles: Strong Spine, Soft Heart
- See the roadmap: Where We Are Going
- Chapter 1 (SEE) is live: Chapter 1: SEE β Naming the Whole Reality
- Join the conversation: Email wiobyrne@gmail.com to connect
We're also seeking contributors for our emerging library of signposts: Call for Submissions
My Main Blog
While developing this work, I've also been documenting practical tools and approaches:
On digital autonomy:
- The Digital Envelope: Why Signal Is Different β What makes Signal different from other messaging apps, and why it matters for the toolkit we're building
- The Digital Shredder: Signal Disappearing Messages β Understanding what disappearing messages actually protect (and what they don't)
- Trust But Verify: Safety Numbers In Signal β What safety numbers mean and why verification matters
On infrastructure and alternatives:
- The Private Cloud: Building a Front Door for My Homelab β The hardest part of my homelab learning curve (so far)
On education and agency:
- From Ungrading to Infrastructure: What I Learned When I Stopped Grading β How ungrading revealed deeper questions about systems and power
- Ungrading 2.0: Labor, Agency, and the Research Archive β The practical structure for my spring courses
On AI and language:
- Finding the "Goldilocks Zone" for AI in Curriculum β Why AI belongs in logistics, not logic
- Why We Need Better Language for AI β Moving beyond vague terminology to useful distinctions
The Newsletter Archive
The digital garden version of this newsletter is taking shape. About 85-90% of the archives are now available with full linking and tagging at digitallyliterate.net/newsletter.
This project started from a simple frustration. When you publish weekly for years, patterns emerge that you can't see issue by issue. Stories that seemed unrelated when I wrote about them six months apart turn out to be the same story. Themes and trends in individual issues reveal themselves as predictable patterns when you can see them side by side.
A chronological archive doesn't help you see those connections. So I'm building something different. An interconnected knowledge system where each issue links to related themes, concepts, and earlier analysis. Where you can trace how "efficiency" evolved from optimization to dependency, or how surveillance capitalism adapts its rhetoric while maintaining its core extraction.
This is what a digital garden does. Instead of content disappearing into reverse chronological order, each piece becomes part of an evolving ecosystem. New issues draw on and connect to older ones. Themes compound over time rather than resetting each week.
It's not finished, but it's usable. You can:
- Explore by theme using the main landing page
- Follow concept threads through the vault's linking system
- See patterns that emerge when you view the whole system at once
- Jump into the archive at any point and find your way through connections rather than dates
I'm treating this like the research process I use in my academic work - constantly identifying new patterns, adding tags, strengthening connections between ideas. The difference is you get to see the garden grow in real time, and navigate it however makes sense for your own questions.
This approach matters because the problems we're documenting aren't episodic. They're systemic. Understanding them requires seeing the whole pattern, not just the latest example.
Start exploring at digitallyliterate.net/newsletter.
π€ Consider
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
β Audre Lorde
For years, this newsletter has documented how systems abandon their stated values when subjected to pressureβrevealing their true priorities of power and profit over care and protection. We've traced patterns of efficiency promises that deliver dependency, privacy rhetoric that enables surveillance, and innovation narratives that concentrate control.
Understanding these patterns is essential. But understanding alone doesn't build the capacity to respond.
This issue marks a shift. Not away from critical analysis, but toward the infrastructure needed to act on what we've learned. What does it look like to build community capacity for digital autonomy? How do we move from witnessing systemic failures to developing genuine alternatives?
β‘ What You Can Do This Week
- Join the Signpost Sessions: Read the welcome post and decide how you want to participate, as a listener, storyteller, or collaborator
- Explore the digital garden: Pick a theme you've been thinking about and trace it through the newsletter archive to see the pattern
- Try one autonomy tool: If Signal feels right, start with the Digital Envelope post and set up your first encrypted conversation
- Share your own signpost: What are you noticing in your corner of the digital world? Your observations help others navigate
- Connect InitiatED to your work: If you're teaching, organizing, or building community, consider how these approaches might apply in your context
π Navigation
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π± Connected Concepts
- 03 CREATE/π² Evergreens/Digital Sovereignty β Building the capacity to make meaningful choices about our digital lives rather than accepting platforms' terms
- Community Capacity β The collective capability to understand, respond to, and shape the systems that affect us
- Digital Autonomy β Moving from platform dependency to genuine agency in how we communicate, organize, and build knowledge
- Knowledge Infrastructure β Systems for creating, connecting, and sharing understanding across time and communities
- The Great Fracturing β The splitting of digital ecosystems between centralized control and privacy-preserving alternatives
- Signpost Sessions β A learning community for witnessing, reflecting, and building response capacity together
- Digital Garden β Knowledge organization that prioritizes connections and patterns over chronology
- From Understanding to Action β The progression from documenting systemic failures to building working alternatives