No Attention Without Representation! Can we combine decentralization with democracy and diversity?
Topic
No Attention Without Representation! Can we combine decentralization with democracy and diversity?
Description
This will be a facilitated discussion exploring the implications of other D’s that are arguably threaded throughout DWeb beyond just Decentralization: Democracy and Diversity (pluralism). How might we best combine them across the web—and where must we make hard choices?
We will have a guided conversation primarily focused on two questions:
- Q1: What do we want? (in the web and its governance)
- Q2: What are the tradeoffs? (of system design choices).
In other words: What does it mean for an information ecosystem to be well governed? What properties should it have? What properties should it not have? The goal here is to help articulate and understand what a rubric for success might look like—to deepen and concretize our implicit aspirations.
Where can we have our cake and eat it too—and where is that not possible? Where do we want to prioritize decentralization/federation rules/norms/systems, interoperability (~exit), individual empowerment/choice/agency, and where do we want to prioritize shared/global rules/norms/systems, democratic participation (~voice), and collective choice/agency? Where do want safe silos vs. pluralistic messiness?
To keep things tangible during the discussion, we’ll introduce several frameworks that we can build on (or demolish) in order to help us explore these questions, and may explore specific case studies of approaches from a core facilitator that aim to navigate some of the tradeoffs (sortition/sampling for governance, bridging-based ranking for pluralism).
Hopes & dreams
- Surface new insights about challenging governance questions.
- Potentially map some of the insights and tradeoffs.
- Provide a space for people to wrestle with challenging trade-offs and challenging questions about what we really want. Inspire people to dig deeper into this.
- Perhaps lead to collaboration / a working group building on this topic at some future point.
- Leave people wanting more!
Core facilitators
- Aviv Ovadya, Jessica Yu, christina bowen
Main contact (email)
- av (at) aviv (dot) me
Space Requirements
- [] Electricity
- [] Monitor
-
Whiteboard or pad -
Table and chairs - [] Seating in circle
- [] Open space outdoors
- [] Either indoors or outdoors is fine
-
Other (Specify) Outdoors would be great if we can get the other requirements. We don’t absolutely need a table.
Time Requirements
- [] 1 hour
-
2 hours - [] Multiple sessions across 1 day
- [] Multiple sessions across 2 days
- [] Multiple sessions across 3 days
- [] Pre breakfast session
- [] Evening session
-
Other (Specify) 1.5 hours would work too (or longer)
Who should participate
- [] Coders
- [] Creatives
- [] Policymakers
- [] Children under 12
- [] Teens 12 - 18
- [] Anyone and everyone
-
Other (Specify) Anyone interested in being part of a facilitated discussion. There may be a brief silent reading component, and post-it note writing.
What will participants take away?
- A richer understanding of what it means to build a web that is also democratic and pluralistic.
Keywords
- Governance, democracy, tradeoffs, rubrics, pluralism
Session rundown (tell us a rough outline of your plan)
Minimum length:
- 5 min for people to trickle in
- 5-10 for brief introductions
- 10-15 min for an overview of Q1 discussion format (may include 5 min of silent reading and post-it writing)
- 30 min for discussion (breakouts depending on size)
- 5-10 min for an overview of Q2
- 30 min for discussion (breakouts depending on size)
- 5 min for wrapup
We may not strictly separate discussions into Q1 and Q2 depending on the feel of the room.
christina bowen will be doing mapping of the discussion in parallel
Relevant links
- https://aviv.medium.com/building-wise-systems-combining-competence-alignment-and-robustness-a9ed872468d3
- https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/holding-platforms-accountable-not-enough-we-need-compass-social-technologies
- https://aviv.medium.com/the-magical-decentralization-fallacy-69b426d16bdc
- http://platformdemocracy.com/
- https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bridging-based-ranking
Relevant Experience -- share why you'll be great!
- Have been involved in extensive research and discussion on these topics (see links above!).