MicroPlatforms
Community computing is possible
Thirty years ago, print and local broadcast media were selling off their futures to the search engines (remember Lycos?) and commercial websites whose only means of eventually taking the place of material and terrestrial media was via advertising through those very formats.
The newspapers and magazines took the advertising dollars they needed for short-term profitability, even though it would mean the end of so many of them in the longer term. They had no obligation to pass the torch, so to speak—they were forced. It is far more efficient (and profitable) to communicate through computer-assisted means than by printed material. Narrowcasting produces a better return per advertising dollar than broadcasting. Data collected and generated through the use of the machines has been rendered into its own forms of value.
Sociality is a raw material, in a social media realm.
But because every electronic simulation that is the internet is beholden to a material, human reality, they take the forms that best suit the interests of those who control (own) them. Every brand you have ever heard of that is tied into the internet, from Microsoft to Apple to AOL to Google to Facebook to Amazon to Uber to Bitcoin—ALL of them were designed as capitalist corporations, and as such, they must keep growing, forever.
Those are the demands of the market. I don’t make the rules.
But we would be a bunch of silly geese, if we were incapable of imagining non-commercial platforms and applications that could be operated on intentionally-limited scales, wouldn’t we? We do not have to follow just the globalized, commercialized platform model of how to utilize computers.
Today, municipalities and states have their own websites and social media accounts. What they should offer instead are community platforms, arranged in whatever geographic model may make the most sense for the community.
Why should the investors in Uber or Lyft get a cut from your neighbor, who needs a ride to the doctor’s office? The town can run a livery platform, along with whatever other gig work they want to include and pass on more money to the seller of services, while charging the buyer less. A community page on Facebook feeds Facebook a bunch of data it uses to generate profits for itself. A community page run by an actual community would have no need to profit from its users’ data.
Some communities already have a public internet service provider, collectively saving the townspeople added costs of buying it from a telecommunications company or a satellite service. This would be a mere next step, call it “Public Services 2.0",” if a tech--sounding name moves it forward.
In the rush to grow in scale and scope, the internet pioneers have left local, material concerns behind. A public internet would include publicly-operated platforms. Properly administered, small, local business will find a better return from advertising on the municipal or county platform than on the global alternatives.
I have experience in interactive media and app development; financiers always want to see the revenue path and if that fails to appeal to them, the utility does not matter. This is why we have Uber and not a Hitchhiker app—Uber is hitchhiking, with a money capture. Rideshare apps have always had more safeguards in place to be sure drivers are not providing rides off the books than they do for passenger safety. A public rideshare platform could conceivably leave the rider and the driver to negotiate their own rate, and cut out the commission/licensing payment entirely.
Creating a community around a platform faces challenges like never before—not the least of them coming from established platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These companies’ early-mover advantages and ensuing market monopolies worked off the utility they offered as the only game in town. It’s not that there is no imaginable competitor to Facebook’s services—it’s that there is no imaginable means to capture the volume of accounts required to pose a legitimate challenge to Facebook. There is no profitability in trying to become the alternative; Facebook has squelched the capacity to compete in the space, on a global scale. What’s left?
The fight against localized microplatforms will only be for the sake of larger corporate profits, not common sense. Capital ignores or dismisses limited scalability because profitless utility is, to it, valueless. Resistance will come from the same folks who cannot possibly imagine a functioning health care system that does not, by design, make a few people rich while leaving many others untreated.