For this, we turn to pattern languages, an organized and coherent set of patterns , each describing a problem and the core of a solution, illustrated with examples . The term was coined by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa in their 1977 book, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction which contains hundreds of... See more

learn from the limits of Web 2.0, where plurality in the face of centralized control tends to ultimately cede power to those who already wield it.

to navigate the intersections between scale and regeneration, between growth and the commons. A principle of ‘many universals’ could provide the framework for balancing the tension between, on one hand, enabling community-led and governed projects to flourish, and, on the other, the need to then challenge massive and well-resourced centers of... See more

we imagine the digital pluriverse as a space that can make way for a mosaic of communal, alternative, and autonomous cultural and economic worlds.

This could look like financing mechanisms for open-source vs. closed-source infrastructure in order to enable community resourcing and abundance, navigating careful partnerships with existing institutions to build polycentric governance in the face of corporate control, and empowering data and platform cooperatives modeled after the worker... See more

How might we actualize this ethic within the digital realm?

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 —pluricultures over monocultures. Thus, the pluriverse arrays itself against a single universality as much as it... See more

We turn to the frame of the Pluriverse because we believe it has much to offer in a time when our current digital space is increasingly colonized by a single vision of what is possible—a vision spurred on by the incentive structures of enclosure and control.

The Pluriverse: A World Where Many Worlds Fit