Science and Technology Production
Article
Authorship
Date
2024
Publishing House and Editing Place
Wiley
Magazine
New Technology, Work and Employment,
vol. 40
(pp. 330-336)
- ISSN 0268-1072
Wiley
Wiley
ISSN
0268-1072
Summary
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SIGEVA
This is the objective of Own This! How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet by Trebor Scholz, whose work has become a fundamental reference point when discussing and advocating for alternatives to the hegemonic capitalist model. One of the most significant transformations in contemporary capitalist societies is the rise and ubiquity of digital platforms. These are online infrastructures that facilitate interactions between different groups of users for the purpose of e...
This is the objective of Own This! How Platform Cooperatives Help Workers Build a Democratic Internet by Trebor Scholz, whose work has become a fundamental reference point when discussing and advocating for alternatives to the hegemonic capitalist model. One of the most significant transformations in contemporary capitalist societies is the rise and ubiquity of digital platforms. These are online infrastructures that facilitate interactions between different groups of users for the purpose of exchanging information, sharing, selling, and buying products, as well as organizing the provision of work, among other activities. Although platforms help to coordinate activities and create job opportunities, they also have negative outcomes, including work precarization, tax avoidance, data extraction, and increased control over individuals. Platform cooperativism emerged as a response to these negative impacts and renewed dangers posed by sociotechnological change under the digital economy. Since the foundation of the Platform Cooperativism Consortium, a hub in New York City for research, community building, and advocacy for co-ops and diverse organizations that carry out businesses and initiatives in the digital economy, Trebor Scholz has made a substantial contribution to three interrelated issues: conceptualizing platform cooperatives, developing a field of academic scholarship, and fostering the formation of a movement. The publication of Own This! Represents a new milestone in this direction. Following a presentation of the structure of the book, I will go deeper into these three main contributions of the book.
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Key Words
TREBOR SCHOLZPLATFORM COOPERATIVESWORK