# Governable Spaces: Designing Democracy for the Internet

Source: https://theblockchainsocialist.com/governable-spaces-designing-democracy-for-the-internet
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Governable-Spaces-Designing-Democracy-for-the-Internet?index=0x6638bca0d3db2968d64db5fb717814f2b2b783ee9b73e48e7c5916aaf242fc21f67e77cd
Submitted by tim on 2024-05-06 UTC, 1 upvote, 1 comment

## Summary

Nathan Schneider argues in Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life that the internet suffers from "implicit feudalism," a cultural and technical bias toward building online communities as fiefdoms. According to the article, this arrangement trains people to give up on their communities' democratic potential and makes them more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider argues that online spaces can learn from past governance legacies to become a more democratic medium. The book is freely available in digital format on Schneider's website.

## Article

I´m once again speaking with Nathan Schneider about his newly released book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life. In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online spaces themselves, as feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities’ democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. But online spaces could be sites of a creative, radical, and democratic renaissance. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider shows how the internet can learn from governance legacies of the past to become a more democratic medium, responsive and inventive unlike anything that has come before.

The book is freely available in digital format on Nathan´s website here.

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## Comments

**tim**: I get cognitive dissonance when people say that tech doesn't enable the same level of participatory freedom that democracy does. Ok, I'm a software dev.

But even I as a software dev that technically has the means, how the hell are you supposed to influence the democratic bureaucracy? Sure, you can hire expensive lawyers and spend a decade upgrading a thing. And with tech you can do that same thing too, I don't necessarily see much of a difference.