Introduction to Digital Co-op Fractals: Iterations, Patterns, Questions as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019

Summary

Luciana Bruno & Amelia Evans introduce guests and speakers to Digital Co-op Fractals – Iterations, Patterns, Questions at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019.

For this session, we are tracing emerging patterns within the cooperative digital ecosystem. We asked Juliet Schor, Joseph Blasi, Gar Alperovitz, Jack Qiu, and Melissa Hoover to each pose a question, which they’ll then answer for 10 minutes. Then, we will open it up to everybody for a People’s Q&A. Here are the questions that will guide our discussion:

How best can platform cooperatives contribute to fundamental community-based system-wide political-economic transformation? What are the particular challenges that platform cooperatives face? How will the quality of the jobs for the workers you expect to work in the cooperative you are designing be better than similar jobs in non-worker-owned firms? What are the essential elements of platforms that aggregate the power and resources of workers rather than atomizing them? How to start a platform co-op while minimizing the dangers of an authoritarian crackdown?

Luciana Bruno is a Brazilian journalist. For the last 15 years, she worked for international news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, covering especially Economics. She now works for the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC Rio), covering Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.

Amelia Evans is an international human rights lawyer and an expert on business and human rights. In 2012, she co-founded MSI Integrity, a non-profit organization that examines the impact and value of voluntary initiatives that address business and human rights.