Information Technology

Digital solidarity and the sharing economy may seem like natural companions. To be sure, the sharing economy with its melding of community and commerce has the potential to be a key contributor to digital solidarity in developing economies.

An online panel facilitated by co-op researcher-practitioner Emi Do that brings together presenters from several such projects: CoTech, Exit to Community Collective, Platform Cooperativism Consortium, SPACE4, Start.coop, UnFound Accelerator, and Union Cooperative Initiative. These projects advance democratic business formation and co-op theory-building, and they offer valuable lessons on the promises and challenges of accelerating worker ownership today.

Last week’s Platform Co-op School event highlighted ICDE’s approach of recognizing the valuable contributions of scholars, technologists, artists, community organizers, and cooperators toward a more just and equitable digital economy. This is a recap of that event.

Relive the excitement of a packed Community Assembly!

Platform cooperativism is the union of technological potential with the strength of the cooperative organization. Worker-owned platforms can be laboratories, building local experiences to challenge the dominant dynamics of gig work. They can reinvent local economic circuits of production and consumption through platforms and improve working conditions while promoting mobility policies and improvements in public transportation, care services, and integration into the health system. This is both a promise and a potential of platform cooperativism.

Big tech is facing an escalating backlash. Co-operatives could offer a more equitable and accountable alternative. In fact, some already do. This article describes three large co-operatives that have managed to take on tech giants such as Amazon and IBM.

What if rather than selling out, successful businesses became community assets that put ownership and governance in the hands of workers and even consumers? Could a startup become a means of building community wealth, economic justice, and accountability over our technology?

We discuss how software is a commons, what the cooperative movement can learn from Silicon Valley, and how cooperative tech projects can scale up.

Loconomics, a startup that offered shared services to freelancers, became a darling of academics and allies interested in platform cooperativism. After six years of bootstrapping, product pivots, and one big break that didn’t pan out, Loconomics came to an end in 2020.

Cycle courier cooperatives are turning technology on the gig economy giants.