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Building Community
Strengthening the Local Economy

Introduction


Lokkal is the digital town square, local internet, like the Yellow Pages robustly reborn for the 21st century.

Lokkal is a collective, cooperative, open project, managed for the community's benefit, where all profits are distributed in the community.

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Lokkal is a social network (like Instagram or Facebook) and a search engine (like Google), but just for San Miguel, making it is easy to find what interests you and to reach everyone who is interested in you.

Event calendar, magazine, social network and search engine, Lokkal is an elegant table of contents to San Miguel, an aesthetic, agile, entertaining way to see our community online.

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On Lokkal's community Wall you can see all posts made in San Miguel or filter and curate to only see what interests you.

A public utility, free of commercial control, Lokkal is a non-intrusive internet experience.

Lokkal is the interface between the virtual and the actual community. Find out what is going on and then go do it.

When you want your friends and family to know, use Facebook. When you want the whole community to know, use Lokkal.

When you organize the internet around a search algorithm, you get Google.
When you organize the internet around friends and family, you get Facebook.
When you organize the internet around neighborhoods and communities, you get better neighborhoods and communities, you get Lokkal.


Lokkal is local internet: social network, search engine, calendar of events... Lokkal is the digital town square, like the Yellow Pages robustly reborn for the 21st century.

Lokkal is a new kind of website, a new kind of internet, internet as a public service. Like public television is different than commercial television, Lokkal is different than commercial internet.

Lokkal returns its profits to the community.

Better community and a stronger local economy are the answer to many of our most pressing social problems.

The solution must be online, because that's where people's attention is, and it must be grassroots, local, because lasting solutions come from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Lokkal organizes the community. It is a platform for practical social activism. If you want to make the world a better place, organize your neighborhood. El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido / The people (or the "town") united will never be defeated.

Organizing locally, promoting local character, is the antidote to the flattening effects of globalism.

Globally-oriented search engines and social networks do not work well locally. Lokkal's strength is local curation.

Thank you Google technicians, but we don't need your algorithm. We will present our own community to the planet.

A meta-platform, Lokkal allows everyone local to publish and be found: everything local to everyone interested; all things to all people... local.

Community moderation encourages civility. Lokkal is humanly curated internet. Lokkal puts crowd-sourcing to work. Juntos podemos / Together we can.

Free of commercial pressures, operated as a public utility, Lokkal does not have to engage and addict users to maximize shareholder profits.

A lot of young people are online playing games, or passing time on social networks. A lot of people of all ages just want to be online. Lokkal gives them a healthier, more edifying online experience. Lokkal is a tool, not a game.

Lokkal is the Buy Local movement online, applied to technology: local internet, of, by and for the community.

Like microfinance brings money to the little guy, Lokkal is micro-internet. Most people, individuals and small businesses, are being left behind by the internet as it is. Lokkal makes internet technology work for "most people".

Lokkal organizes local online markets, so that customers who prefer to buy both online and local can do so. In this way, Lokkal levels the playing field, making the internet work for small businesses. Lokkal is Small Business Saturday every day.

Based on their viewership, Lokkal rewards content providers for their content. You build the website, you get the profits. Based on your viewership, Lokkal will pay you to curate what interests you: shoes, jazz, animals, toddlers, art, ice cream, bicycling...

Jaron Lanier (the "Father of Virtual Reality") says that when you push everything through one filter you get a z-curve, a steeply peaked curve with very little room at the top. We see this with online music sales, where 5% of the musicians make 95% of the sales.

With multiple filters, such as there will be with Lokkal, the z-curve's pinnacle becomes a broader, lower summit, with room for a lot of people. This more equitable distribution of income allows many more people to pursue what interests them, as they now get paid for what was before a hobby or a dream.



Right now, we, as users, build Facebook, uploading content, making that platform an attractive, entertaining site. Facebook sells ads on their attractive, entertaining site, and all the profits accrue to Mark Zuckerberg and his investors.

Right now, Google provides search results to users searching the web for information on San Miguel de Allende, and sells ads alongside those search results, with the ad revenues going to Google.

Lokkal is our own social network and search engine, our own local Facebook and Google, with profits going to the community.

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Permaculture's principal strategy is water catchment, retaining the water that falls when it rains, instead of letting it flow away downhill. (Most simply this is done by digging ditches, mini-reservoirs.)

Lokkal is economic permaculture. Instead of water, Lokkal catches currency, wealth. Right now, sthe vast majority of money flows through, over and past the community. Lokkal catches that wealth, allowing it to permeate and percolate down, building up the community's economic water table.

We we make a digital town square, our own internet platform, then, like permaculture catches the water, we catch the advertising revenues, keeping the wealth circulating in our community.

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The Magic of Buying Local:

A visitor enters a hotel, and puts a $100 bill down on the counter to rent a room. Pausing, he announces, "I'd like to see the room first." The hotel owner hands him the room key and tells him, "Second floor, the last door on the left." The visior takes the key and walks upstairs, leaving the $100 on the counter.

The hotel owner grabs the $100 and runs next door to the restaurant where he uses the money to pay his restaurant tab. The restaurant owner, walks over to his carpenter, who is eating dinner, and pays him for work he has done. The carpenter, pushes the bill across the table to his sex worker. She rises quickly, runs next door to the hotel and pays her bill, putting the $100 bill on the hotel counter just as the visitor is making his way back downstairs.





Lokkal is:
  •a digital town square
  •a robust, interactive city directory
  •like the old Yellow Pages reborn for the 21st century
  •a local social network and search engine where you can:

  •Find businesses, people, places, events, products...
  •Create content: Profiles, Pages, Events...
  •Advertise for free

Lokkal is:
a social network like Facebook and
it is a search engine like Google,
but Lokkal is local, geographically-specific, just for San Miguel.



Connecting the community, Lokkal is:
  •our local internet platform
  •a digital mall
  •the one place to go for everything San Miguel

There is local TV and local radio.
There are local newspapers.
Now there is local internet.
Now we have Lokkal.

Search is work.
People don't want to search.
They want to find.
Lokkal is find, not search.

On Lokkal you can find local:
  •businesses
  •events
  •people
  •places of interest
  •products
  •services
  •workshops
  •performances
  •rentals
  •clubs
  •classes
  •movie schedules
  •nightlife
  •more



Like Facebook, Lokkal is a social network where you can make a profile, pages, posts, events and comment on posts.
But Lokkal is geographically-specific.
Each city, starting here in San Miguel, has its own Lokkal platform.

Like Google, Lokkal is a search engine.
But Lokkal's innovative search technology makes it easy to find what interests you without sorting through a mountain of irrelevant results.

Choose hashtags (key words) for your content and when users search for those #tags they find your profile, page, post, event listing...

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Reaching out:
Lokkal makes it easy for local businesses to communicate with their clients and potential clients, easy to socially network locally.

Reaching in:
Lokkal makes local search easy.

(These functions, local social networking and local search, are very difficult on global platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Google...)



On Lokkal it is easy to find what interests you and to reach everyone who is interested in you:

- if your restaurant cares enough about gorditas to choose the hashtag #gorditas, then users who care about gorditas can find your restaurant

- if you want to meet someone who has an interest in wine and jazz guitar, you can search profiles for people who have used the hashtags #wine and #jazzguitar

- if you are visiting a new city and want to play a game of chess, you can search profiles, pages, posts and events for the hashtag #chess

- if you want to attend a concert, you can search the event calendar for #livemusic or #concert or #blues or...

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On Lokkal's Wall you can view all posts in the city
and see everything that is going on in town
or filter posts to see only those:

  •with photos
  •made on Profiles (by individuals)
  •made on Pages (by businesses, etc.)
  •with the most likes
  •made by your Friends
  •with #tags that interest you
  •etc.

When you want your friends and family to know, use Facebook.
When you want the whole community to know, use Lokkal.

Use Lokkal without registering, or register to create your own content, to comment on posts, to message other users.



Lokkal is:
  •a geographically-specific internet platform that builds community and fosters empathy
  •a digital town square that strengthens the local economy, combats income inequality, resists the concentration of wealth and provides Covid relief for small businesses
  •a transparent, more ethical, more humane, less addictive, less toxic internet experience
  •a meta-platform that gets to the root of many problems facing society today
  •a counterweight to the forces of globalism
  •the People's Internet, a grassroots, cooperative, crowd-sourced project, free of commercial control, managed like a public utility for the community's benefit
  •a new type of website, a new way of using the internet, community supported internet

A local economic platform, Lokkal:
  •keeps money flowing locally
  •enriches the community
  •provides Covid relief for small businesses

Lokkal is:
  •part of the movement towards a more ethical, more humane internet
  •a non-addictive, non-toxic internet platform
  •an interface between the digital and the actual community
  •realizing the great hopes of the internet as a force of positive social change

Lokkal is a new kind of website, a new kind of internet; the internet as a public service.

Like public television is different than commercial television Lokkal is different than commercial internet.

By promoting community wealth, communication and interaction Lokkal provides a platform for positive, constructive, practical social activism.

Thank you, Big Tech, but we don't need your algorithms; we will present our own community to the world.



Lokkal is "Buy Local" online.

Why are we letting global companies (Air BNB, Uber...) come to our city and extract wealth?

We can make our own rental or ride service and keep the money spent flowing in our city.

Lokkal organizes a local Amazon.com so that customers who prefer to buy both online and local can do so.

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Lokkal provides technology to small businesses leveling the technological playing field, allowing small players to compete against the "big boys".

Like micro-finance, Lokkal is micro-technology.

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Lokkal makes it easy for local businesses to communicate with their clients and potential clients.

Raising living standards boosts the overall well-being of societies, reducing many social ills.

Free of poverty, people become better educated and they take better care of the natural environment.

Free of the struggle for the basic necessities, people are able to focus on their higher needs.

Local people helping local people benefits everyone in the community, society as a whole.

Stronger community is the answer to many of society's challenges:
  •improving health
  •extending life
  •promoting well-being
  •fostering empathy
  •bettering quality of life
  •increasing income...

Community fosters:
  •belonging
  •place
  •identity
  •purpose
  •meaning
  •happiness

Healthier communities create healthier individuals in a positive feedback loop, because healthier individuals in turn create healthier communities.



"[Google's] business model and their algorithms are destroying humanity." - Jaron Lanier, inventor of Virtual Reality

Lokkal is humanly curated internet

As opposed to the Facebook model, where Mark Zuckerberg profits from the platform that users build, on Lokkal the community will share the profits of the platform they build.

Entertaining and fun, Lokkal is yet a tool to put you in touch with your real life neighbors.

Online social networks substitute poorly for face to face interactions. Digital likes and notifications are pale imitations of real world affirmations.

The interface between the digital and the actual community, Lokkal encourages socializing in the material world. Find out what is going on and then go do it. Create community.

Life is more than what the algorithm displays. Artificial intelligence must serve, not master, humanity.

Lokkal is the People's Internet. Take back the web.

Lokkal is not just a new website. Lokkal is a new internet experience.

Everyone is shouting, "Global! Global!" Lokkal shouts, "Local!"

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Lokkal is a huge innovation, a Blue Ocean Strategy that opens up an undiscovered market:

  •Cirque du Soleil combines features of circus and theater
  •NetJets allows corporations to share jets
  •Paypal invented the online payment platform
  •Lokkal organizes the internet in service of the local community.



Social networking, getting noticed online, is now very difficult. It is a complicated, time-consuming art and science. To do it you need to invest many hours or many dollars... and keep investing them.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that social networking on global platforms (Facebook, Instagram...) is impossible for local businesses. It is extremely difficult to target your posts so that they reach a local audience.

Lokkal make local social networking easy. All your posts stay local. If you post in San Miguel, your post stays in San Miguel and users interested in San Miguel can find it.

Now, with Lokkal the local entity (dentist, bakery, NGO, club, individual...) can reach their local market.

Lokkal is a metaplatform, a platform of platforms. The city united.

We are fortunate to have many non-profit organizations here in San Miguel working in their particular ways to make our city better, to help people here. Lokkal unites these NGOs on a single publicity platform, making it easier to inform the public of their important work.



Lokkal has started in San Miguel, but already has the technology to replicate in other towns and cities.

Lokkal donates or invests its profits in the local community.

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People love being online, but what is there to do?

Facebook is good for keeping up with friends and family.
Instagram is a picture book.
Tik Tok is a tide of very short videos.

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Lokkal is a positive, constructive, practical, non-governmental, grassroot force for change, helping to create a richer, more articulated, more vibrant community.

Lokkal puts crowd-sourcing to work.

When a lot of people each guess the number of jellybeans in a jar or the weight of an ox the average of all their guesses is the closest estimate of the right answer. Collectively we are smarter than the smartest of us.



Lokkal channels the energy of the community in a supportive, expanding structure. Lokkal's evolving platform allows the force of community to organize, develop and grow organically.

There is great power in the collective. Sharing resources, together we can.

Lokkal relies on local representatives to update and monitor content. There is no substitute for the local curation of content. If you are interested in helping, please email us:

If you want to make the world a better place, start with yourself. Then look towards improving your community.

Lokkal provides a practical, positive way to better your community. It is a platform for constructive social activism.

Many sober and intelligent people imagine us transitioning to a utopian future. Technology is leading us to a place where education is free and machines do most all of the work.

We are moving from a zero sum paradigm (if you win, I lose) to a paradigm of abundance (if you win, I win).

This utopian future depends on healthier communities and requires a healthier internet. Lokkal strengthens communities online and off.

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky -

"...true security is to be found in social solidarity..."

"All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, 'How strong I am now and how secure,' and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light."
      The Brothers Karamazov, Book 6, Chapter 2

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