Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider (eds.), Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, A New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet, New York/London: OR Books, 2016, 252 pp. ISBN: 978-1-68219-062-3.
Edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider, Ours to Hack and to Own is one of the pioneering collections to present platform cooperativism as an alternative based on shared ownership and democratic governance in the digital economy. The book discusses problems associated with the platform economy, often referred to as the “sharing economy,” such as labour exploitation, surveillance, and the concentration of economic power, bringing together the long tradition of cooperativism and the possibilities offered by digital technologies. Its point of departure is the question of who owns and governs the platforms and protocols that constitute the Internet’s fundamental infrastructure.
At the heart of the book are shared ownership and democratic governance. According to Scholz and Schneider, platform cooperativism requires not merely that existing corporate platforms be operated in a more ethical or equitable manner, but that the relations of ownership and decision-making over the Internet’s centres of power be transformed. They therefore do not reduce platform cooperativism to the development of a handful of alternative applications; instead, they argue for the creation of a broader ecosystem encompassing finance, law, public policy, and culture in order to enable democratic online enterprises to develop.
The collection situates this discussion within a broad framework that moves from a critique of platform capitalism towards alternative forms of digital organization. Alongside labour relations, inequality, surveillance, and the digital commons in the platform economy, it addresses issues such as the design of cooperative platforms, trade unions, privacy, finance, open cooperativism, data commons, and public policies for digital sovereignty. The book also connects theoretical discussion with concrete initiatives by presenting early experiences of platform cooperativism such as Stocksy United, Fairmondo, Coopify, FairCoop, and Loconomics.
Scholz’s contribution to the book defines platform cooperativism as a model that brings together the historical experience of workers’ self-management, the cooperative movement, commons-based peer production, and the digital economy. Platforms do not necessarily have to be owned by companies such as Uber; they can be owned and governed by cooperatives, communities, cities, or trade-union structures. Workers can thus cease to be merely people who work through platforms and instead become the collective owners and governors of the digital infrastructures they use.
This perspective extends democratic control to technology itself. Platform cooperatives, it is argued, should make transparent where data about workers and users are stored and how they are used; work on the platform should be co-determined, and the people who will use the platform should participate in the technology’s design process from the very beginning. In this sense, platform cooperativism seeks not only to change the legal form of ownership of an enterprise, but also to establish democratic control over data, algorithmic systems, and the organization of the digital working environment.
In this respect, Ours to Hack and to Own is an important resource that extends the discussion of workers’ control and self-management to questions of ownership, technology, and governance in the digital economy. Rather than approaching the problems generated by platform capitalism solely through regulation or improvements in working conditions, the book raises the question of who should own digital infrastructures and who should govern them. By conceiving platform cooperativism as part of a broader ecosystem supported by trade unions, communities, public policies, and solidarity networks, rather than as a collection of isolated enterprises, the volume provides a key resource for discussing the possibilities of democratic control and self-management over digital labour.