I’ve cited the “British Digital Cooperative” report in a several articles and recommended it to a number of people, so it was great to finally speak with its author, @danhind, and get some more insight on how he imagines a cooperative future for technology.
I think one of the key things is how hard it can be to imagine an alternative to what exists right now — whether it’s in terms of political organization, the structure of economic sectors, or how technology would work under a different set of material conditions.
That’s one of the most valuable aspects of Dan’s report: tech can be developed in a very different way, it can encourage & enable different functions (and figuring those out will take collaborative work), and it can help enable more democratic political & economic structures.
We might start by saying “a better Facebook” or “a better Amazon,” but once the work begins & development teams work with and translate the needs of communities into functionality, divorced from the need to turn a profit, there’s an opportunity to create something very different.
Obviously, I hope you enjoy our chat and I’m really happy Dan was able to make the time for it.
I also recommend giving the report a read and thinking for yourself how cooperative, democratic development might produce a different kind of technology: thenextsystem.org/bdc
I also recommend giving the report a read and thinking for yourself how cooperative, democratic development might produce a different kind of technology: thenextsystem.org/bdc
