2. Olocal History and Purpose

History of Olocal

“I created Itabix 20 years ago with the single purpose of using Web technologies to support local community. The spark came when I was reading a conversation with Tim Berners-Lee, the actual creator of the Internet. Dr. Berners-Lee stated that he wished he had built localization into the World Wide Web, so that you could easily find websites that were related to your local area.

I originally tried to build a set of online community websites, starting with one for our local area, and had secured venture capital for the project and created a content management (CMS) system for the websites. That’s when the dot-com bubble burst and funding dried up. So I pivoted and converted the CMS to manage business websites and moved Itabix into web hosting. The idea was to build the expertise and resources needed to develop the community platform without outside funding.

Since then, I’ve been watching first the wave of big box stores wiping out the malls that wiped out the , and then the development of the Web and social media, and the destructive effects they are having on our local communities socially and economically. And I’ve been working on a plan to shift that, to use Web technologies to benefit local community.

Starting in 2015, I have devoted as many of my and my company’s resources as possible to creating a Web platform (website and app) that can build local community by supporting our artists and our providers, a place on the Web to bring the people around us together and reveal the many hidden gems in our community. It’s called Olocal, short for Online Local.

Sam McClellan, President
Itabix Inc

What’s different about Olocal?

1. The purpose of Olocal is to support local community — a central hub for community information, entertainment, creativity and interaction.
2. Unlike large social media companies who are beholden to their advertisers and their stockholders, Olocal is beholden only to our members.
3. We’re combining different web technologies synergistically to create a sum that’s greater than the parts.

In Support of Local

One hundred years ago, our lives were all about local. Our social life was with our neighbors, with many different places around the town square to interact. It took weeks for mail to go between you and any far away friends or family. Only one in three of us had a phone. Most of our food was grown locally (and it was all organic), and we purchased goods in the local store almost exclusively. It took weeks or even months to send a “mail order” and receive it. We mostly didn’t travel very far, because half of us didn’t even own a car and cars were very unreliable.

While I don’t think most of us want to go back to that time, something has been lost – places and ways to congregate, to meet people, and to interact. We are much more physically isolated, so more and more we turn to the media and virtual relationships. And, of course, COVID-19 has exacerbated that enormously.

Along with that, between big banks, big box and chain stores and the Web most of the money we spend goes out of the local economy, making our community poorer.

The Problem with Existing Media

Social media & the press are currently incentivized to drastically exaggerate narratives of division. This in turn creates more division & the downward spiral continues… I believe there is much more love than hate in the world.
– Lex Fridman, AI researcher. Podcast host @lexfridman

Most of us are dependent on the media — television, web platforms and social media — for our information, entertainment and interaction. The large media outlets are almost all owned by large corporations that are primarily focused on survival, competition and profits. They have to compete with literally millions of information streams from around the country and the globe, unlike in the past where there were a few radio stations and then a few TV stations. Grabbing and keeping our attention (along with our money and our personal information) is what pays the bills and defines success.

The media (including social media) have the capacity of attracting and holding our attention while supporting our better nature, but they can also do it by encouraging our worst nature. At their best, they entertain, educate and connect us. At their worst, they leverage the aggression, suffering, loneliness, and fear of others to keep our attention. They appeal to our limbic brains with stories about the elite and fame, brutality, and victims. Combining all three is a trifecta, and will stay in the news for weeks, months or years — Princess Diana and O. J. Simpson are good examples.

Just as the media can lean toward getting and keeping our attention through aggression, fear, suffering and loneliness, people on social media too often get attention through aggression and fear mongering.

And pretty much all of these platforms lead us away from our local community.

The iPhone Moment for Social Media

The iPhone brought together multiple technologies – phone, touch screen, computer, internet connection, gps, camera, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, compass, and barometer – replacing dozens of individual instruments and creating capabilities that never existed before. There’s actually a practical joke where you tell someone that there’s a scale in their phone so they can weigh themselves but you need to use two phones, one for each foot, and a surprising number of people believe it because we’re used to our phones doing so much. Try it! But don’t let them actually stand on the phones, okay?

On the Web and even in our phones, however, we’re used to having separate, specialized websites and apps. Think about all the places you go in your browser and in your apps. What if we combined functions of the useful, popular web technologies and unify their functions in the same way the iPhone did? They start benefiting each other, and you get more in one place.

So Now What?

We need a way to connect with our local community, and the current platforms aren’t serving us as well as they could.

We believe there is a need for a platform that:

• Creates a hub for local interaction.
• Bases its success on how well it serves the community and provides everyone a voice, and that supports and encourages our better humanity, rather than rewarding aggression.
• Brings together the different technologies that, by themselves are useful but in concert are much more useful.

And that’s why we created Olocal.