Cloud Platforms: How Digital Platforms are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control

Join digital economy expert and Professor at the University of Oxford Vili Lehdonvirta to explore the rise of the platform economy into state like dominance over our lives and propose a new way forward.

The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. Hosted by Seth Harris, Northeastern Professor and Senior Fellow, the Initiative on Labor and Economic Justice at the Burnes Center for Social Change and Saiph Savage, Assistant Professor and Director of Civic AI Lab, Khoury College. In person and on Zoom.