Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life

The Internet has so far forgotten the bias for democracy that long reigned among offline clubs, public companies, and other associations. How can the Internet catch up to my mother’s garden club—or, even better, enable a new renaissance in creative self-governance?

The Internet can enable much more than just a return to regimes of bylaws and boards.... See more

Digital spaces are an urban geography in their own right. The trouble is, most of our online spaces are monopolized by entities ultimately trying to sell us a product. As a result, those spaces similarly embody the same Orwellian doublespeak that characterized the Soviet era. We are told we can use them for building connection and community, but we... See more

Many online platforms serving wide groups of people need governance, to decide on features, content moderation policies or other challenges important to their user community, though there too, the user community rarely maps cleanly to anything but itself. How is it fair for the US government to govern Twitter, when Twitter is often a platform for p... See more