sambusa.institute

The Sambusa Institute exists to champion technologies shaped by the cultures that coalesced around the fried distillation of all flavors in different manifestations of a trigram. Samosas, wontons, momo, spring rolls, empanadas … all sambusa. Together, we represent the vast majority of this planet’s population. Yet we are so often an afterthought in how the world’s technology is built.

All technical systems are designed for whiteness.
I repeat, all technical systems are designed for whiteness.

Whiteness here is not about skin color. It is a design principle — the assumption of a default user around whom all systems are built, and the relegation of everyone else to an afterthought. These technologies were built for the in-group. The rest of us are an afterthought by design — given just enough to keep laboring, never enough to reshape the system. The aim of this institute is to harness the transformative power of technology to combat this pattern: to align the design and implementation of our tools around the needs of the sambusa-consuming populations of the world.

We pledge ourselves to building technology that serves actual people — to realign the global technological mast towards greater good rather than accumulation of wealth.

We are living through a re-entrenchment of ancient monies, severe war mongering, and as of the time of this writing, literal world war. We must not only develop the means of protecting ourselves. We must develop the forces that counteract this dire situation.

This effort is not for our lifetimes. It is for those of future generations we wish to free from the confines of the Empire.

We are as serfs in the Middle Ages. We sell our attention, are granted measly, overpriced “plots of land” (our 250 sq. ft. apartments) and endless entertainment in exchange for our eyeballs, our legs, our brains, our hearts. We don’t see, except for what they show us. We don’t move unless we’re told, “this is the move”. We don’t think until someone tells us what to think. We shed tears for imaginary struggle, untethered from reality, humanity.

This cannot be our future.
This will not be our future.

The only way to mount an honest defense against these forces is to mount an offense, and there is no time to waste. We have borne witness to the devastation generated images have wrought on our WhatsApp groups, iMessages and TikTok feeds. Without immediate collective action, we leave ourselves exposed to a new kind of danger — a tyranny of overwhelming and inescapable falsehoods.

We must fundamentally remake our communication, our security, our very relationships in our image.

“The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”
— James Baldwin