An Internet of Ownership:: Democratic Design for the Online Economy

press release: The disappointments of the sharing economy—for instance, monopolistic conglomerates and systemic labor abuses—stem from its failures to meaningfully share ownership and governance. Under the banner of “platform cooperativism,” an emerging network of cooperative developers, tech entrepreneurs, labor organizers, and scholars are developing a business ecosystem that aligns the ownership and governance of companies and products with the people whose lives are most affected by them. This represents a radical critique of the existing online economy, but it’s also a field of experimentation for healthier ownership design.

Nathan Schneider is a scholar-in-residence of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder who writes about economy, technology, and religion. His articles have appeared in publications including Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Catholic Worker, and others. He writes regular columns for America, a national Catholic weekly, and Vice magazine, and he is a contributing editor for YES! Magazine. His two books, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet and Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, were both published in 2013 by University of California Press. In 2015, he co-organized “Platform Cooperativism,” a pioneering conference on democratic online platforms at The New School, and co-edited the subsequent book, Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet.

http://nathanschneider.info/