rithikha.com

About

Hi I’m Rithikha. I’m a writer, city organizer, and multi-media journalist currently living on Lenape Lands in Brooklyn, New York.  

I’m interested in social systems and how tools like technology influence the ways we coordinate around issues like climate change, labour and housing, from the neighbourhood to global scale. My philosophy is that if we designed it before, we can redesign it now; the first step is to recognize and identify the dark matter that permeates and governs our daily lives, much of which is (purposefully) hidden from us in black box today. 

I’m a bit of a multi-tool and often wear many different hats, often playing the writer, researcher and filmmaker as often as I am the decentralised technologist, startup consultant and data scientist. I grew up moving around a lot and I think that exposure and integration into so many different cultures and communities has forever removed for me the boundaries and silos that we often operate in by default in our world today. I can’t help but see the connections and similarities between people and places. 

I currently run a civic research and development consultancy called the V6A Collaborative. Through a coalition-based collaborative model we are spending the next few years experimenting with and supporting various kinds of community-governed civic infrastructure, from ecological to technical. 

I am also an associate producer with the Documentary Film Lab where I’m supporting a documentary following a group of scientists reimagining science to co-produce knowledge and climate solutions directly with communities most affected. And am often making my own little experiments in alternative filmmaking and speculative fiction (more to come on the latter soon). These side quests quench my desire to be talking to people and observing civic life from the ground. I find that it enhances my work at V6A and in the decentralised technology space, and keeps me grounded in life and all the glorious messiness it has to offer. 

As of late I’ve been enjoying multi-day cycling trips and getting to know the global bike-packing community better. I find biking the perfect pace and mode of travel to get to know a place and its people deeply. I’ve also thinking about the role of protocols in our daily lives and how they can be used to better share knowledge and solutions at multiple scales. With a background in disaster resilience I’m acutely aware that the reason we’ve survived rapid change in the past is by iterating on solutions and sharing what works and doesn't with each other freely. It makes me wonder what it would be like if we could open-source policy along with its associated physical and technological infrastructure to facilitate better knowledge sharing within and between cities. Some examples that have caught my eye and provide a glimpse into such a future: WikiHouse, Salmon Nation, Golda Velzez on Taking Public Policy OUt of the Cathedral and Into the Bazaar

You can reach me at rithikharajamohan [at] gmail [dot] com 

RITHIKHA RAJAMOHAN

“Local-first software [is a] set of principles for software that enables both collaboration and ownership for users. Local-first ideals include the ability to work offline and collaborate across multiple devices, while also improving the security, privacy, long-term preservation, and user control of data.”

- Ink & Switch"

in·ter·stice

/inˈtərstəs/

An intervening space, especially a very small one. From intersistere, to ‘stand in between’

Founder and civic technologist with a love for the interstices.

I’m the Founder and Principal of V6A Labs, an applied R&D studio that researches, prototypes and builds civic infrastructure, leveraging local-first and distributed systems + thinking to create adaptive solutions for an increasingly complex world.

I’ve worked with and been supported by startups, foundations and organizations, such as the Ethereum Foundation, Climate-KIC, and 221A, among others, to strategize and drive business development, support product engineering, conduct research, employ strategic foresight, and implement programs; all with the common goal to better operate within complexity and understand how technology can be leveraged in service of people to create fairer, more sustainable systems.

Previously I worked in geospatial data analysis, public policy+community organizing, and journalism.

My undergrad was in ecology and computer science at the University of British Columbia, where I spent much of my time making maps, writing code, and bushwhacking in forests. During my M.Sc in City and Regional Planning at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy I spent a lot of time alternating between a bird’s-eye and worm’s-eye view of the world; it was during this time that I developed a better understanding of how it’s currently designed and also began scheming on how we can re-design it better.

“These remarkable societies suggest that, just as many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power outage, human beings reset themselves to something altruistic, communitarian, resourceful and imaginative after a disaster, that we revert to something we already know how to do. The possibility of paradise is already within us as a default setting..”

- Rebecca Solnit

Systems whose overall behavior is extremely complex, yet whose fundamental components parts are each very simple, and constantly adapt to their environment.

PROJECTS | SOCIALS | MULTIMEDIA

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