There are several parallel efforts to build digital commons. Each represents different institutions, constituents and approaches, flying under banners with their distinct terminologies: digital public infrastructure (https://publicinfrastructure.org/about/), decentralized web (https://getdweb.net/principles/), and platform cooperativism (https://platform.coop/), to name a few. What these movements have in common is a recognition that network technologies serve communities better when they are treated as public goods — tools that are designed, governed, or owned in a manner that puts the people building and using them at the center over the sole pursuit of profit. They also recognize that democratic or participatory governance of digital infrastructure can happen at every layer of the network stack.
This session will present these distinct but seemingly aligned movements to build digital infrastructure that is governed and managed by their communities of users, technologists, and other stakeholders. We will present the organizing principles of these movements, as well as their stakeholders and approaches. Following a short presentation, we will hold a discussion amongst participants reflecting on how these movements differ, how they are similar, and how they can work and complement each other to build healthy, distributed, and community-stewarded digital networks.
