NovaFuture is a lot more than just a website
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A whole personal journey before NovaFuture finally came to life
It’s hard to grasp the full potential of NovaFuture without knowing a bit about the person who created it. I really don’t enjoy this kind of exercise, but I’ll still try to introduce myself in broad strokes. My first name is Emmanuel, but a lot of people know me through my various pseudonyms. Chasing recognition has never been one of my goals, which explains why I use them. All that matters to me is creating projects that are useful and that give as much meaning to life as possible.
For as long as I can remember, anarchist philosophy has been part of who I am. It wasn’t until I was around 20 that I managed to put it into words and understand that it was a strength rather than some glitch in my wiring. I also got incredibly lucky to have solid abilities in both literary and scientific subjects. Those traits go a long way toward explaining everything that came afterward.
The real adventure kicked off in 1997 with the creation of an alternative space, alongside Ukrainian hackers, artists and makers of every kind. The concept blended a Linux center, a web TV station back in 1998 and cultural activities with no commercial logic behind them. Meanwhile, in 1999, Indymedia was born and I threw myself into the project. That was the start of a deep passion for free media that would take various forms over the years and that has never left me.
Around 2001, I met a brilliant engineer who was designing and building compressed-air cars. His project was a bit shaky, but it was still a huge wake-up call that made me realize you can’t break out of capitalism with writing, video and open source software alone. You need something tangible, otherwise you stay stuck in theory and you end up coming across as a wide-eyed idealist. So I let the space I had created carry on without me and I dove headfirst into intensive training on ecological alternatives and self-sufficiency.
I moved around a lot. Across several countries. Most of the time my van was my home. The moment I heard about an alternative project somewhere, I’d head straight there. I’d swap ideas and learn by doing. This went on for about four years. By the end of that period, I was starting to build serious skills. To take things up a notch, I set up a consulting firm specializing in alternatives. Once again with no real economic logic behind it. My main priority was always to keep growing my knowledge, mostly by trading ideas with other engineers and seasoned technicians. That adventure took me traveling far and wide and let me discover other cultures.
After about six years, even though it had never been my goal, my consulting firm was actually doing pretty well. But I felt like I had done what I had to do there. So I dropped everything to head to Africa to live a simple life and develop alternatives that could be useful on the ground. Between 2011 and 2023, I only spent about three years total in Europe.
Toward the end, the whole COVID situation made a lot of things complicated. But it also fell during a period when I was feeling the need for a breath of fresh air anyway. So I figured that if I wanted to pull off something genuinely effective between what’s loosely called the Global South and the West, I had to build a kind of bridge between those two worlds. That’s where the NovaFuture concept came from. From day one, I was fully aware that this was going to be one heck of a challenge, that it would be a massive amount of work and that patience would be essential.
In the end, all those adventures combined have been truly remarkable. But nothing was ever simple. Because alongside the apparent successes, the road has also been paved with doubts and of course plenty of failures. Without doubts and failures, no learning is possible. And therefore no real success is possible either. The good news in all of this is that failures are sometimes painful enough that you avoid repeating them. As for doubts, you learn to deal with them as your skills grow.
Now, as you’ve probably figured out, NovaFuture is the fruit of this whole journey, of which I’ve only sketched out the broad outlines here. On top of that, in a time when fakery, virtuality and AI take up more and more space, it felt extremely important to me to bring a real touch of humanity to the way I introduce this new project.
Our editorial philosophy in everyday practice
What’s amazing about knowledge, culture and information is that these are three things you can share endlessly without ever losing them. Based on that, sharing is the core value that drives our approach. In itself, it’s already living proof that you can operate in ways that go beyond purely transactional ones. Is it easy? Absolutely not! We put in countless hours to keep moving the site forward. We do our best to put the best of ourselves into every piece of it. But despite all that, the web remains an extremely brutal territory. Trolls aside, we regularly get unpleasant remarks from people who probably think they’re talking to the customer service desk at some supermarket. According to them, we absolutely must do this or that to keep them happy. Sometimes it’s because they didn’t like the content of an article, other times it’s a visual that supposedly isn’t professional enough… Fair enough, except for one thing: we never sold anything in the first place.
Thankfully, those kinds of bad behaviors are largely outweighed by all the positive things we receive. Friendly comments, helpful and well-meaning advice to help us improve, and sometimes even donations to help cover the running costs of the site. All those small kind acts are what push us to outdo ourselves and go further. It might sound trivial, but it’s actually huge. Because when you’re working on a free project that eats up a massive amount of your time and that, on top of everything, costs you money because it runs at a loss, trust us when we say you go through serious phases of doubt on a regular basis. That’s part of the behind-the-scenes reality, but the main thing is that every time we come out of it with even more motivation.
When it comes to our editorial line, we feel it’s crystal clear. It fits in a single sentence: offer concrete alternatives to capitalism and patriarchy. As for putting that line into practice, we definitely don’t pretend to hand out ready-made thinking. Our goal is rather to open up debates and see what constructive things come out of them. Following that principle, we make zero effort to please everyone. First, because trying to please everyone amounts to pleasing no one. Beyond that, a cultural space that doesn’t push people to think and to question things would be on the same level as scrolling through social media or watching television. Hitting that mark is fairly easy for us because we have neither advertisers nor sponsors to keep happy. On top of that, we can afford the luxury of losing readers who feel rubbed the wrong way. For committed authors, that kind of freedom is priceless. And for the people using the site, it’s an absolute guarantee of access to genuine independence of mind.
Another point that feels obvious: our role is also to shine a light on every initiative that aligns with our editorial line. Whether on the technical side or the cultural side. To do that, we put no geographic limits on ourselves and we try our best to give visibility to people or projects that deserve to step out of the shadows. Because even within underground circles, there’s unfortunately a sort of well-established star system that pushes everyone to focus on what’s already popular. So we steer clear of that direction, because there’s not much point in kicking down doors that are already wide open.
NovaFuture, moving forward together, each in their own way
NovaFuture is definitely not an end in itself. In fact, it can’t and shouldn’t be an end in itself. Quite simply because it’s not a political movement with its dogmas and an agenda of measures to be imposed. To sum it up, NovaFuture is more like a kind of compass pointing toward paths out of injustice and obscurantism. From there, it’s up to each person to follow their own road, taking this or that trajectory.
That doesn’t mean we’re individualists, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. Because it would make zero sense to talk about open source and open projects if we didn’t actually walk the talk. So to take part in NovaFuture, you just need to understand how an independent and self-managed project works. It’s not all that complicated, you simply say here’s what I can do. From there, you can bring in your skills as a writer, coder, designer, translator, communicator… for whatever length of time and level of availability suits you. To get started, hit us up on NovaFlow or on our networks and things will fall into place naturally. In a friendly atmosphere, with mutual respect.
Alongside that, we very regularly support other independent projects in one form or another. So there are tons of different ways to walk the same path, and we’re always thrilled to see people drawing inspiration from our approach, just as other people inspired us and continue to do so. Because at the end of the day, all that really matters is that we keep moving forward together toward ecological and social progress. In other words, within this approach, names, labels and logos carry no weight at all.
NovaFuture can’t be content with just existing on the web
We’ve talked a lot about the internet. Probably because it’s the visible part of the iceberg. Now let’s talk a bit about concrete projects in real life. To unlock its full potential, NovaFuture absolutely needs a physical space. This project, currently in the works, will be the natural next step in a very long journey, and it’ll let us prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that another world is possible.
It’s a necessity because this can’t happen by staying purely theoretical. For the moment, we make do with what we have. But in absolute terms, a lot of talent is going to waste. Sure, we know how to write and we get by with code. But beyond that, we know how to work with wood, metal, stone… We know how to operate complex tools. We’re proficient in permaculture, eco-construction, self-sufficiency techniques… and plenty of other practical fields. Without a space and without the right tools, all that know-how stays dormant. We can’t share it, simply because we don’t have the proper structure for it.
To be totally clear, we now have a solid handle on every aspect of project planning. Through experience, one huge certainty has emerged. The principle is easy to grasp: emancipation projects without a self-sustaining model are bottomless pits and quickly end up doomed to fail. The NovaFuture project therefore has no intention of calling on public generosity once it’s up and running. Quite simply because everything is designed so the project can not only sustain itself but also generate the means for its own expansion. Another point worth highlighting: trying to launch a project while underfunded is also a recipe for failure, because it brings demotivation and a cascade of problems. So we’ll launch this project once all the launch targets have been met.
Now we’ve probably reached the moment where you’re thinking: “Why would I donate to a project that’s going to take place far from where I live? I’d rather skip this part because it doesn’t really concern me.” That’s a totally legitimate question. So it deserves a real answer. Whenever we receive something, we usually give something back in one form or another. In the case of this project, what does that actually look like? For a start, we’ll be able to produce far more detailed how-to guides, plenty of video tutorials, low-tech open source applications… So given that we share everything under copyleft or open source, who benefits from it? Answer: thousands of people, you included. On top of that, there’s the whole applied philosophy side, which is far from negligible. Not to mention that it’ll also open up other fields of possibility that you’ll be able to tap into as well. So in the end, the question isn’t whether you want to chip in for a NovaFuture space. Because the real question is rather: would you rather we keep treading water or that we move forward together? I’ll let you answer that one.
If you’d like to know more about this big project, you’ll find all the information by clicking this link. And of course, we can also chat about it on NovaFlow or anywhere else.
How to support the project?
So there you have it, we did our best to introduce NovaFuture to you with all its ins and outs. We really wanted to do it in a friendly way, without getting into purely technical aspects. All that’s left now is to hope that from this point on, you have a slightly better grasp of everything we want to share.
If after all these explanations you’d like to support the project, you can do it in just a few seconds on Buy me a Coffee. Recurring donations are hugely valuable to help us move forward, because they give us a bit of security. And if unfortunately you don’t have the means to support us financially, you can still take part by sharing our content, by bringing your skills, and by dropping us a friendly message from time to time. Either way, thanks for reading this far. And thanks for being here.