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 Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The New Yorker,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.
Welcome to the Internet of Ownership
Building a platform co-op economy is about more than just new “killer apps”—it’s about creating and connecting an ecosystem. In the wake of last year’s Platform Cooperativism conference, he and others have developed The Internet of Ownership, a prototype reference and discovery tool for the platform co-op ecosystem. It includes platform co-ops themselves, as well as organizations poised to support their development through funding, technical support, and more. Already, we are starting to see strong patterns emerging among the ownership designs at work in the platform co-op ecosystem, as well as critical gaps.