Ours To Govern And To Own

At a time of growing public distrust and disillusionment with the Internet as a source of democracy, an emerging movement of social entrepreneurs, cooperativists, designers, labor advocates, workers, and programmers is working toward a people-centered, cooperative Internet where platforms are owned and governed by the people who most rely on them. At a time of growing public distrust and disillusionment with the Internet as a source of democracy, an emerging movement of social entrepreneurs, cooperativists, designers, labor advocates, workers, and programmers is working toward a people-centered, cooperative Internet where platforms are owned and governed by the people who most rely on them.

Trebor Scholz, Associate Professor at The New School, has penned the concept of “platform cooperativism” to describe this movement in the making. He will be in conversation with four pioneers in this area to explore the prospects for structures of collective ownership, finance, data transparency, and democratic governance online.

Emma Yorra of the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, will introduce Coopify, a platform for women-led immigrant cooperatives in Brooklyn. Brendan Martin, founder and director of The Working World, will speak about cooperative finance. San Francisco-based author and entrepreneur Chelsea Rustrum will talk about her experiences with sharing communities. Felix Weth will introduce Fairmondo, a cooperatively-owned online-marketplace, founded in Berlin.

Ours to Govern and to Own is a follow-up to the Platform Cooperativism event, co-convened by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider at The New School, New York in November 2015. It is a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut and the The New School and presented in conjunction with the Kultursymposium Weimar, a major international conference on “Teilen und Tauschen/ The Sharing Game” organized by the Goethe-Institut and taking place in Weimar (Germany) June 1-3, 2016.