Ours to Hack and to Own
The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, A New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet
Edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider
Paperback: $15.00 Ebook: $10 Print and ebook: $20
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Radical democracy and the Internet are not mutually exclusive. Here, for the first time in one volume, participants in a growing movement of thinkers and doers explain how the Internet became a tool for corporate extraction, and how to reverse the process. Combining the rich heritage of cooperatives with the promise of 21st-century technologies, platform cooperativism is a call for a new kind of online economy, one free from the economics of monopoly, exploitation, and surveillance.
The on-demand economy is reversing the rights and protections workers have fought for centuries to win. Ordinary Internet users, meanwhile, retain little control over their personal data. While promising to be the great equalizers, online platforms have often exacerbated social inequalities. Can the Internet be owned and governed differently?
What if Uber drivers set up their own platform, or if a city’s residents controlled their own version of Airbnb? This book shows that another kind of Internet is possible – and that, in a new generation of online platforms, it is already taking shape.
Contributors in this volume include: Michel Bauwens, Yochai Benkler, Francesca Bria, Miriam Cherry, Ra Criscitiello, John Duda, Seda Gürses, Marina Gorbis, Karen Gregory, Steven Hill, Dmytri Kleiner, Vasilis Kostakis, Brendan Martin, Micky Metts, Kristy Milland, Mayo Fuster Morell, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Rachel O’Dwyer, Janelle Orsi, Michael Peck, Carmen Rojas, Douglas Rushkoff, Saskia Sassen, Juliet Schor, Palak Shah, Tom Slee, Danny Spitzberg, Arun Sundararajan, Astra Taylor, Cameron Tonkinwise, McKenzie Wark, and Caroline Woolard.
170 pages.
Ships in October 2016