Equitable Pioneers for the Digital Economy

Trebor Scholz Almost thirty years after the inception of the World
Wide Web, platform ownership is more concentrated than ever. It
didn't take Facebook's massive data compromise or Care.com's
unsustainably low wages to understand that a more diversified and
democratic digital economy is more needed than ever. How can
especially workers on the edge of society respond to the numerous
"disruptions" on the horizon including automation and algorithmic
decision making as well as unanticipated and unpredictable changes?
In his keynote, Scholz proposes an economic, political, and
cultural alternative that responds to these challenges by driving
the economic domain into more humane and equitable directions. Four
years ago, Scholz introduced what he calls platform cooperativism,
an Internet based on broad-based platform ownership and democratic
governance. This activist research project supports the integration
of cooperatives into the digital economy. Showcasing work with
platform co-ops in India, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia,
Columbia, Brazil, the UK and the United States, Scholz demonstrates
that a democratically-owned People’s Internet is not only possible
but that it already exists. Silicon Valley loves a good disruption;
let’s give them one.