Bunk Blog

We are Bunk Computer Cooperative — a technology cooperative in Asheville, NC. This is a small post explaining the who, what, where, when, why, and how of our business.

Who?

We are three founding humans — Dani, sorrel, and Maren — all based in Asheville, NC.

What?

We are building local computing infrastructure where the users are not the product. We're also a small business that's structured as a worker cooperative. Being a worker cooperative means that everyone who works at Bunk is also an owner, and we do lots of democratic decision making.

Where?

Right here, in the place that we live! We offer services only to residents of Western North Carolina. The counties in our service area are Cherokee, Graham, Clay, Swain, Macon, Jackson, Haywood, Transylvania, Madison, Buncombe, Henderson, Yancey, McDowell, Rutherford, Polk, Mitchell, Burke, Avery, Caldwell, Watauga, Wilkes, Ashe, and Allegany.

When?

We had our first official meeting in July of 2024, and we hope to offer our first paid service in 2025.

Why?

Why are we starting a local computer cooperative? There are too many reasons to count. But here are a few:

  • We want basic computing tools, like email and a cloud office suite, without giving all our personal data to Big Tech. That doesn't exist locally, so we're making it.
  • Big Tech is awful, but we love computers and want to love what they do for our communities. So we're doing small, local tech.
  • We want a strong local economy that is less tourism-dependent — building local computing infrastructure is one way to do that.
  • Hurricane Helene showed us that resilient, local computing infrastructure is important for disaster preparedness.
  • We want to work in computing without the infinite growth mandate of Big Tech. We don't want to grow beyond Western North Carolina.
  • Remember Google's former “Don't be evil” policy? Well we have that too, but you know where we live 😉

How?

One step at a time! We've started by launching Hopniss, a privacy-focused search engine powered by open-source software. Hopniss is free to use for anyone in the world.

We're still in the early development stages of our local cloud service, powered by the open-source Nextcloud software. After that, there's still so much to do. We may be early in our journey, but we still want to share it with you! Here's how you can follow us and keep in touch:

Yours in bits and bytes, Bunk Cooperators