Session 10. 2.

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.

We identity two core problems in technology used in governance: simulation and extraction. We pose new values for guiding the use and design of technology for governance: empowerment to self-rule and the development of the capacities for self-rule. Drawing on a long tradition of participatory democratic theory, we offer a framework for evaluating the uses and designs of governance technologies. We then conclude with notes on how to apply these values to possible uses of AI in deliberative processes. We believe this framework will be of interest both to those interested primarily in ensuring good government, and to those more concerned with the intrinsic benefits of popular self-government.

Values statements can be used to draw lines, so to speak, in the sand. Especially (though not exclusively) when considering knowledge resources, value statements can be understood as boundary objects that enable diverse interests to be constructively aligned through institutional design. This presentation will consider examples of common value statements – such as “open” and “smart,” among others – to illustrate the institutional challenge of constructing normative boundaries that are simultaneously universal and concrete, and to illuminate the role that value statements can play in designing institutional strategies and rules. We will also discuss practical approaches to drafting value statements through democratic processes.