Upcoming event at The New School (h/t Trebor Scholz):

Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy

November 13-14, The New School
http://platformcoop.net

The seeds are being planted for a new kind of online economy. For all the wonders the Internet brings us, it is dominated by an economics of monopoly, extraction, and surveillance. Ordinary users retain little control over their personal data, and the digital workplace is creeping into every corner of workers’ lives. Online platforms often exploit and exacerbate existing inequalities in society, even while promising to be the great equalizers. Could the Internet be owned and governed differently? What if Uber drivers could set up their own platform, or if cities could control their own version of Airbnb? Can Silicon Alley do things more democratically than Silicon Valley? What are the prospects for platform cooperativism?

On November 13 and 14, the New School in New York City will host a coming-out party for the cooperative Internet, built of platforms owned and governed by the people who rely on them. The program will include discussion sessions, screenings, monologues, legal hacks, workshops, and dialogues, as well as a showcase of projects, both conceptual and actual, under the purview of celebrity judges. We’ll learn from coders and worker cooperatives, scholars, and designers. Together, we’ll put their lessons to work as we work toward structural economic change. This is your chance to get on the ground floor of the next Internet, and to help make it a reality.

Platform Cooperativism is convened by Trebor Scholz (The New School) and Nathan Schneider (University of Colorado Boulder).

Further reading:
https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad
http://www.shareable.net/blog/owning-is-the-new-sharing
http://www.thenation.com/article/5-ways-take-back-tech/

Sponsors & Partners

Platform Cooperativism is sponsored by The New School’s Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts, The Freelancers Union, The Workers Lab, The Robert L. Heilbronner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School for Social Research, Institute for the Future, The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung NYC and Demand Progress in partnership with Civic Hall, Democracy Collaborative, The Yale Information Society Project, NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives, The Robin Hood Foundation, The Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at CUNY, The Working World, Carnegie Mellon School of Design, and Shareable.

This is the fourth event in The New School’s series The Politics of Digital Culture, which included The Internet as Playground & Factory (2009) and Digital Labor (2014), among other conferences. There will be two additional summits in this series, following up on these themes, in 2016.

Twitter: @platformcoop #platformcoop

best,

Trebor
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R. Trebor Scholz
Associate Professor
THE NEW SCHOOL
@trebors