by Rashid Owoyele

Originally posted on LinkedIn November 22, 2022

A snippet from my diary: Represented Kick Off

Dear Represented Institute Supporters,

I would like to start by telling a little story. When I was 12 years old my family got a computer and we were connected to AOL. There I got linked with a program called Microsoft Chat. It was an early experiment with three dimensional interfaces on the internet and I found myself there so often that I became a Moderator. In those days of the internet, being a moderator of a digital space was quite the achievement for a pre-teen. There was a certain pride that I took in being the first person that people new to the platform would interact with. I had my routine introductions and got to demonstrate my expertise about the digital space and tools available for connecting with other people from all over the world.

As time has gone by, the magic of the internet has waned and the second generation of the web has grown to be a tool for neoliberal capitalistic domination. Many of you are probably exposed to the pursuit of the third generation of internet culture, called Web3, in which block-chain and distributed ledger tech has enabled NFTs, cryptocurrency, and a lot of untethered discussions across channels from discord to slack and telegram. The last 3 years I have found the joy and passion that I felt when I was a kid — I have found a lot of potential at the intersection of internet technologies, cooperativism, and have been establishing a body of research in the space of STATECRAFT; the art of governance.

Research — transformation tipping point, equitable and just design, situated knowledge and value on the global market

I found my self doing work with and around the Platform Cooperativism movement, which has become a growing global discussion and clusters of academic and entrepreneurial work attempting to establish a future in which platform companies and infrastructures are no longer owned by tech billionaires, used to spy on and manipulate us as consumers, steal and extract our data and our creative production while systemically polarizing our political economies making the world yet again a space of fearful and distrustful actors while the rich get richer and the other 99% of us worry about how we will heat our homes (if we have them).

Cooperatives are a potential tipping point

Cooperatives are an important but very contested institutional model in the global societal consciousness. While many have heard of them, few seem to understand the potential and promise of cooperative organizations. Some people think that they are not businesses, that they can not generate a profit, or that only difficult hippies are associated with them. Indeed, my research the last years has indicated that this — structural identity — is the greatest narrative barrier to the adoption of these more equitable and just organization types. The other 2 narrative barriers that keep people from taking up cooperative working systems are that folks don’t know why they would want to work in cooperative organizations and they don’t have an understanding of the Affective Agency that cooperators can expect.

Also, as a result of my ongoing research, I have found that INFORMING people about the answers to these questions is an ineffective way of initiating a transition to cooperativist working worlds.

What seems to be missing is the cultural readiness for change — we have been conditioned to KNOW that the world can not be a better place.

The best action, I have found, is to engage people in imagining their own futures — futures in which they own the platforms they work for, consume from, and share data and production behaviors with. My research has yet to uncover why it is that speculative production seems to be a more impactful strategy, but it is a start! A space where we can coordinate action, produce findings from our ongoing discussions, and perhaps inspire others to pursue equitable and just organizations in their own contexts to meet their own unique needs.

So that is it… this is why; this is the call to action