A colorful and busy scene of people transacting with one another across a range of digital businesses and services.
Business

Toward a Digital Economy That’s Truly Collaborative, Not Exploitative

By Samer Hassan

Overcoming the flaws of an internet controlled by a few major players will enable web services that are more democratic and fair.

Featured Stories

As a person walks through a doorway, they leave a data trail of 0s and 1s behind them, with small dollar signs appearing in the shadow of data.
Data

Why We Should End the Data Economy

By Carissa Véliz

The data economy depends on violating our right to privacy on a massive scale, collecting as much personal data as possible for profit.

The classical columns of a large bank building are being shoved aside by two figures on the left and the right, with bright fractal imagery escaping from within, representing the decentralization of finance.
Business

Finance 3.0: DeFi, Dapps, and the Promise of Decentralized Disruption

By Kevin Werbach

DeFi has the capacity to transform financial services, but challenges and risks need to be properly addressed to fulfill its potential.

Hummingbirds and butterflies surround a glass enclosure in the shape of a head that has flowers locked within it. Some dead birds and butterflies appear below.
Policy

Unfair Use: Anti-Interoperability and Our Dwindling Digital Freedom

By Cory Doctorow

As software expands into every device and system, monopolies are using intellectual property to control competitors, critics, and customers.

The arms of a many-tentacled landlord creep around an open scene grabbing rent in the form of money and personal data from assorted figures in different cells.
Business

The Internet of Landlords Makes Renters of Us All

By Jathan Sadowski

Breaking the platform economy’s cycle of extraction and enclosure can redistribute power over data and infrastructure to the public.

Articles

A series of uniform heads are seen with play buttons for eyes of different colors that are projecting outwards.
Business

Platforms, Creative Communities, and the Need for a Radical Reimagining

By Tim Maughan

Content creators are at the mercy of corporations because they have no control over the infrastructure on which they depend.

A woman's face is segmented by different colored web browsers that show different anonymizing, irregular, and contrasting elements: sunglasses in one, a hat in another, a thin mustache in another, creating a mosaic disguise.
Data

The End of Logins and Passwords, Just for Starters

By Doc Searls

Self-sovereign identity is a decentralized model that allows users to control their data, enabling digital experiences that are secure and interoperable.

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A map shows data centers and network cables spanning the globe and entangling users.
Networks

The Infrastructural Power Beneath the Internet as We Know It

By Ingrid Burrington

Control over underlying tech infrastructure determines who benefits from it, raising the prospect of alternative ownership and profit models.

An internet timeline that shows selective illustrated milestones.
Networks

Internet Evolution: A Timeline History of the Network

By Daniel McGlynn

A chronological guide to the developmental milestones that have defined the internet.

A constructive scene of buildings in different architectural styles is being assembled from digital bits.
Networks

The Architecture of Computer Programming

By Claire L. Evans

Code must run, as buildings must stand, without crumbling, but how that happens is a matter of elegance, even beauty.

A busy, colorful cityscape features an array of billboards and signs displaying tech company logos.
Business

Silicon Everywhere: A Brief History of America’s Tech Hubs

By Joanne McNeil

How the shared culture of Silicon Valley has shaped, and been shaped by, the places where tech has taken root.

Hands are seen placing ballots inside boxes that are a chain of blocks.
Networks

Beyond Cryptoeconomics: Platform Cooperativism and the Future of Blockchain Governance

By Nathan Schneider

Crypto should encourage a renaissance of creative governance possibilities that organize economic mechanisms around values and rights.

Abstracted avatars of user data are segmented by red lines as they blur into digital static.
Business

The Internet Has Gentrified — Here’s What We Can Do About It

By Jessa Lingel

Gentrification is a useful idea for understanding the internet’s problems, as well as the need for alternative models that are open and fair.

A smartphone is seen opening vertically to expose its components between Apple and Android icons and apps/services.
Business

Cracking Open the Android/iOS Grip on Smartphones and the Mobile Internet

By Robert W. Gehl

Challenging Google and Apple's dominance of mobile operating systems can give users more control, and support a broad realignment within tech.

A digital landscape shows dysfunctional web browser windows and 404 errors, with a pair of scissors cutting a cable in the foreground.
Networks

When Governments Turn the Internet Off

By Jillian C. York

In democracies and authoritarian nations alike, governments have come to rely on an ability to cut off internet access to the public.

An image of the US Capitol building wearing VR goggles that are visibly cracked, against a vast circuit-board background.
Policy

‘Hipster Antitrust’ Is Coming for Big Tech

By Karl Bode

A regulatory push in Congress, along with Big Tech critic Lina Khan's ascension as a chief antitrust official, may signal meaningful reform.

An array of oversized devices, buttons, and interfaces are manipulated by various individuals.
Business

Fixing Tech’s Design Problem

By Kristina Rapacki

UX designers, engineers, and the iPhone's co-designer are reassessing the priorities behind the ways we interact with apps and devices.

People looking at their mobile phones are surrounded by app icons that feature open eyes, most of which have been crossed out.
Data

Power Play: Big Tech’s Feud Over Mobile App Tracking

By Matthew Crain

Apple and Facebook's dispute over iPhone data tracking reveals more about corporate power over the internet than it does about user privacy.

An array of browser windows shows different people in urban and rural settings on their devices and at their computers at home, with communications cables seen in the distance.
Policy

Internet for All: The Push for a Public Utility

By Evan Malmgren

Support for municipal broadband in cities like New York could spark a movement for equitable internet access throughout the US.

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