What is 421
The internet promised freedom and delivered control.
The phone in your pocket knows where you sleep, what you search for at three in the morning, and how long you stare at a photo before scrolling on. The apps you use to communicate, work, and entertain yourself were designed to keep you inside as long as possible. You're not the user — you're the product. This has been said a thousand times. What almost no one says is what to do about it.
421 exists to answer that question.
We are a publication that writes about culture, technology, philosophy, and real life. We publish essays, guides, chronicles, interviews, and tutorials. We talk about Warhammer and Sloterdijk, about comfort food and memes, about artificial intelligence and Lovecraft. But there's a thread running through everything: the conviction that you can think for yourself, build with your own hands, and live on your own terms — within the margins the era allows.
We're not a tech blog. We're not a philosophy journal. We're not an instruction manual. We're all three at once.
The thesis
Everything we publish revolves around three axes. We didn't invent them — we discovered them as we wrote. They're the invisible structure that connects a tutorial on how to free your phone from Google with an essay on Peter Sloterdijk.
Think: cognitive sovereignty
Before doing anything, you need the ability to think for yourself. That is, by virtue of what you truly desire.
Cognitive sovereignty is the capacity to keep your thinking active, filter the information you receive, and resist — as much as possible — manipulation, both crude and subtle. In a world designed to capture your attention and steer your decisions, thinking on your own is an act of autonomy.
It's not about disconnecting. It's about connecting with intention.
→ Cognitive sovereignty: introduction to psychic autonomy
Feel: low-tech high life
Technology is not neutral. Every tool you use has a cost and a benefit, and most of the time they don't let you see the cost. Low-tech high life is the ability to choose consciously: to evaluate each technology before adopting it, to prefer simplicity when complexity adds nothing, and to understand that living better doesn't require the latest model of anything.
It's not nostalgia. It's not Luddism. It's strategy.
→ Low-tech high life: a response to cyberpunk
Do: digital autonomy
Thinking and feeling aren't enough if they don't translate into action. Digital autonomy is the set of tools and practices for taking back control of your online life:
Your phone is the device you use the most and the one that surveils you the most. It can be freed. You can use Android without Google, without sacrificing functionality.
→ Android phones without Google
Your connection — you're already paying for it. The entire layer of services built on top — streaming, storage, productivity — has free and open alternatives that are just as good or better.
→ You already pay for internet: don't pay for the rest
Your online identity doesn't have to be an open book. Privacy isn't paranoia — it's an obfuscation strategy with concrete tools.
Your cloud can be literally yours. An old hard drive, a Raspberry Pi, and a couple of hours are enough to set up your own infrastructure.
→ Selfhosting: how to host your own home cloud
The alternative web exists. Decentralized networks, open protocols, communities that work without algorithms or advertising.
→ What is the small web and how it works
The complete guide to getting started from scratch is here. You don't need to know how to code.
→ Cyberciruja guide to digital self-determination
Why it matters
There's one word that sums all of this up: autonomy. Not in the abstract sense of political philosophy, but in the concrete sense of your daily life. Can you read an article without an algorithm having chosen it for you? Can you communicate without a third party storing every word? Can you decide what software runs on the device you paid for?
Generally, we navigate the internet as tenants in someone else's infrastructure.
421 doesn't expect everyone to move to the countryside and grow their own food. But we do expect every person to understand the rules of the game they're playing. And to know that playing differently is an option.
How to start
You don't have to do everything at once. Pick a text to start with:
- If you want to understand the problem: read Cognitive sovereignty — it's the foundational text.
- If you want to act now: read You already pay for internet — in one afternoon you can replace 5 paid services with free alternatives.
- If you want to go deep: follow the reading route Autonomy in action — 12 texts that go from philosophy to practice.
And if none of this interests you but you're into memes, wargames, or science fiction, we have that too. We'll probably end up talking about autonomy anyway.
The project
421 was born in Buenos Aires in 2024. We publish in Spanish and English. We have a free digital magazine, a newsletter, curated reading routes, and a community of over 4,000 readers.
For now, all content is free. We're funded by voluntary subscriptions from readers who want this to keep existing and the support of our partners.
If you've made it this far, you probably already get what this is about.
Welcome to 421.