US society is fraying at the seams. We need to
think about our ‘civic infrastructure’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/04/us-society-civic-infrastructure
Jan-Werner Müller, Professor at Princeton and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin, notes:
“Local associations promoting dialogue could receive grants from it, alongside public libraries and other spaces with civic uses. The proposal can be extended to online public spaces. As everyone knows, the dominant social media platforms today – especially Facebook – are based on the business models of “incitement capitalism”: the imperative to segregate and rile people up, and keep them under constant surveillance, all in order to monetize their “engagement”. By now, there are excellent plans for public, non-partisan platforms and digital democratic infrastructure. It would be naive to think that these could replace behemoths like Facebook, with its billions of users and corresponding network effects; but they might complement them with proper spaces for civic exchange. Some scholars also advocate a Corporation for Public Software, on the model of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to make civic digital tools freely available”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/04/us-society-civic-infrastructure
Jan-Werner Müller, Professor at Princeton and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin, notes:
“Local associations promoting dialogue could receive grants from it, alongside public libraries and other spaces with civic uses. The proposal can be extended to online public spaces. As everyone knows, the dominant social media platforms today – especially Facebook – are based on the business models of “incitement capitalism”: the imperative to segregate and rile people up, and keep them under constant surveillance, all in order to monetize their “engagement”. By now, there are excellent plans for public, non-partisan platforms and digital democratic infrastructure. It would be naive to think that these could replace behemoths like Facebook, with its billions of users and corresponding network effects; but they might complement them with proper spaces for civic exchange. Some scholars also advocate a Corporation for Public Software, on the model of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to make civic digital tools freely available”.
