Networking Peripheries: Technological Futures and the Myth of Digital Universalism

In a world transformed by the widespread use of networked technologies, humanity faces a significant divide between those who can access and use new technologies and those who cannot, counterbalancing the considerable opportunities that are being created in new economic sectors.

As Verses’ ‘Toward a Digital Pluriverse’ elaborates, “These advocates aimed to counter the universal–not with a disregard of all things universal, but with an embrace of ‘many universals’. This is not a rejection of the necessity of scale; instead, it embraces federation and branching and requires many worlds to exist ‘at scale’—pluricultures over ... See more

The ubiquity of technology and the standardisation of internet-based connectivity has facilitated the emergence of new digital economies. In some instances, these economies 1) allow participants to trade excess supply, 2) facilitate new ways to commercialise existing activities and influence and 3) generate income in wholly digital spaces from whol... See more