Vasiliki Bednar leads us on a discussion on the potential of public platforrms.

We have come to rightfully resent the propaganda of the gig economy that assures us platform companies are equitable when they tend to be exploitative. But they don’t have to be predatory. Other jurisdictions are experimenting with worker-owned platform co-operatives. It’s not too hard to imagine public sector platforms. Indeed, we must first re-imagine them as we consider whether they are worth investing in and building in-house. 

There are plenty of places in the public sector that are characterized by matching problems that could be solved with an efficient platform designed with the public good in mind: 

• Substitute teachers and school boards; 
• Teaching graduates and school boards;
• Medical school graduates and residencies;
• Personal support workers and home care; 
• Citizens and psychotherapists;
• Postdoc positions at Canadian universities; 
• Etc. 

*The province has a lot of regulated professions, but that doesn’t mean that all of them are characterized by matching inefficiencies. Bike share programs are also a neat case study re: public investment and/or partnership in bike sharing infrastructure.  

We have certain stereotypes that have come to be associated with platforms that we need to move past if we really want to reimagine them.

What is an ethical/responsible platform that benefits the very same labour that it showcases? Can they exist and persist with a modest profit margin as a non-profit or thrive as a worker-owned co-operative? Can members embrace higher price points that support livable wages and benefits?

The pandemic has empowered professionals to pursue a balance between life and work, leading many to move out of major cities to find refuge in rural communities. What does this shift mean for the future of work and the role of super cities? How should government policies support rural economic development while also investing in cities as economic engines? Is the Internet transforming where we work? Fibre optic internet is one obvious essential requirement, but so are robust transportation networks, and self-driving vehicles. Can we work anywhere and everywhere?

The ‘future of work’ is about more than work environments. The global challenge is to ensure that workers have the right resources to improve their lives, but to enable them to continue to work productively. For many this will mean the opportunity to live in a community that exists on a smaller, arguably human scale.

1. Free fibre optic Internet to the home for everyone everywhere
2. Active investment in transportation infrastructure and self driving vehicles
3. Free online education for students of all ages
4. Flexible work policies that make it easier for people to choose where they work
5. Affordable housing in rural environments as well as urban

Chad Thiele is the founder of the AI Content Dojo, a group exploring the rise of GPT-3 powered automating writing and copy editing tools.

We spoke with him about the emerging industry forming around APIs like GPT-3 and other automated media tools.

Murley Herrle-Fanning joins us to discuss NFTs, crypto art, and virtual real estate.

As per usual, the reporting on this technology driven phenomena is misleading at best, entirely wrong at worst. Although I’m not convinced that this is a technology story per se, but rather an investing, or scam story. In so far as the Art world is a combination of the two.

For example the figures cited in NFT stories. Those numbers are incorrect, as they are translations. In most cases these transactions are not in dollars, they are in tokens, or ether, as that’s the whole point. These are blockchain transactions, and the purchases are happening in crypto-currency, linking their value with the value of Bitcoin, or Ether.

This is relevant because of who would already have this currency, or who would be in a position to acquire it relatively easily.

The appeal of such financing is understandable, if you’re willing to trust in this technology that seeks to automate trust.

Unfortunately there are ample reasons for us to distrust it.

For starters, while the blockchain is designed to verify that items uploaded to the blockchain are indeed those items, that doesn’t prevent someone from uploading something they do not have the rights to upload.

Or what about the environmental impact? Or the cultural logic driving this entire process.

We discuss all of this and more.

This is the recording of a Metaviews salon we conducted in February 2021, with Vasiliki Bednar and Greg Majster. It was in response to a paper published that featured the following:

We are inspired by renewed calls to Defund the Police in the United States, which have reinvigorated vital debate regarding the funding of police departments, who is actually served by them, and what forms of historical injustice are perpetuated by current institutions of policing and incarceration. In the context of the abolitionist movement, to defund means to invite local and regional communities to decide how to redirect the disproportionate funds now invested in enforcement and imprisonment to support alternative, more holistic forms of well being and public safety infrastructure.

In the spirit of that movement, we adapt some of its key concepts to the domain of public/community information and communications (ICT) infrastructures, particularly those now dominated by Big Tech. Our proposal is grounded on a key premise: to redirect Big Tech ’s excessive revenue flow, we must transform the conditions and funding structures that enable it.

The aim is to free up resources to support a wide range of socially beneficial ends, not least community-based and community-oriented initiatives to develop digital infrastructures that better serve the public interest. While we are not calling for the demise of Big Tech, we are calling for radical reform. This includes abolition of the conditions that create and normalize Big Tech’s disproportionate reach over key ICT infrastructure, and their wide ranging negative consequences for society and the environment. We aim to retain — and expand — the many benefits that people currently derive from digital technologies, while better addressing their individual and collective needs.

You can read more here https://techotherwise.pubpub.org/defund-big-tech

Transparency is becoming an easy go to as a solution to almost any problem of the algorithmic era. Given the phrase “black box society” this is understandable, as so much of our world is opaque or secretive, that there is a natural desire for more access and scrutiny.

Yet in this rush to champion transparency, are we using a broad brush when greater nuance is necessary?

For example, personal privacy is essential, but what about corporate privacy or secrecy? Privacy for the individual and transparency for the corporation seems like a sensible balance. Unfortunately we currently have the opposite.

What about government however? Should we afford our governments and politicians similar nuance?

James G D’Angelo thinks so. He argues that the impact of transparency on politics has been disastrous. That much of the polarization and sensationalism of politics can be traced back to laws that force greater scrutiny of the minutiae of policy development and politicking.

A Metaviews salon from January 2021 on the topic of responsible innovation. What is it, and why should we be encouraging it? Led by Vasiliki Bednar, this salon looks at how the pandemic provides an opportunity for innovation.

Competition law is increasingly in the news as antitrust and regulatory actions come for Big Tech. In this salon from January 2021, we discuss competition law in general, and particularly in Canada. Robin Shaban from Vivic Research led this discussion.

Paris Marx is a writer, researcher, and host of the podcast “Tech Won’t Save Us”. We had him on the show to talk about the political economy of innovative technology policies.