A Wired Magazine Top Tech Book of 2017
Real democracy and the Internet are not mutually exclusive.
Here, for the first time in one volume, are some of the most cogent
thinkers and doers on the subject of the cooptation of the Internet, and
how we can resist and reverse the process. The activists who have put
together Ours to Hack and to Own argue for a new kind of online
economy: platform cooperativism, which combines the rich heritage of
cooperatives with the promise of 21st-century technologies, free from
monopoly, exploitation, and surveillance.
The on-demand economy is reversing the rights and protections workers
fought for centuries to win. Ordinary Internet users, meanwhile, retain
little control over their personal data. While promising to be the great
equalizers, online platforms have often exacerbated social inequalities.
Can the Internet be owned and governed differently? What if Uber drivers
set up their own platform, or if a city's residents controlled their own
version of Airbnb? This book shows that another kind of Internet is
possible--and that, in a new generation of online platforms, it is
already taking shape.