Platformization: The platform organizational form is eating the world and we can do better
My friend and researcher of the politics of tech platforms, Gianmarco Cristofari recently had an extended in my apartment and so we thought it'd be a great opportunity to interview each other. He interviewed me here for the Institute for Network Cultures to talk about my book and the left's relationship with crypto. We spoke about how platforms are markets within markets, his book The Politics of Platformization, and the socialist history of cybernetics. While he stayed at my place he also r...
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Transcript
Do you want to tell us a bit how you've enjoyed your residency at the Bread Chain House. What was it like read reading my book first and then meeting me afterwards? Was it as you expected or not? I are you gonna say this on the in the podcast?
We're recording already? Okay. Cool. Okay. It was it was definitely, like, a a good experience. You know? It was fun. There was your, you know, there was, like, your your present, your ghost haunting me before when when arrived. And then when you actually showed up, yeah, the ghost, you know, it turn it it become an anthology. You know? So, yeah, it was good. And now we're friends. So that's good also. Did my personality
in the book match my real life personality?
I will say that the the way of writing, yeah, it kind of reflects your your personality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely.
Alright. Well, I'm here today in my own apartment with my now good friend, Gian Marco Cristofori. He is he wrote a book called The Politics of Platformization, which he wrote while studying under Geert Lovink in Amsterdam, recently got his PhD. And recently, GianMarco has been staying at my place for the past month where he read my book before he met me. And then when I came back home, he was here waiting for me and cooked me many delicious Italian meals
Thanks.
Which I'm very grateful for. But so GianMarco is basically a, let's say, an expert on platforms and the politics of platforms. So we're gonna get into that in a bit, but maybe first, it would be interesting to know, Gianmarco, if you can introduce to people who you are and maybe a bit of your history as well as, I think, what's relevant is kind of, like, the work that you did in your activism with Extinction Rebellion.
Yeah. So I have mixed background in the sense that I'm I am a lawyer, actually, and I've been active, you know, as a data protection consultant for, like, two years, then I work in labor law for other two years. But beside that, yeah, I'm kind of a leftist, and so I've always tried to be kind of politically active in many ways. Yeah. And when I quit my job in 2019, I moved back to my hometown. Then I I kind of got involved into a extinction rebellion and in the organization of the Italian movement until COVID came, and then it was kind of problematic to do that and the PhD at the same time. But that was a very, very interesting experience because, I mean, the questions, you know, of our time, basically, my opinion are apart from the technological question, the climate crisis is like really, like, our epistemological horizon is like the the single most important fact we can care about. So so that and then I, yeah, then I moved to Amsterdam and there that's where I kind of continued my my research that I was doing from a legal point of view, but digging more into the the political problems of platformization.
Yeah. So you wrote this book, The Politics of Platformization, which Gerd Lovink actually gifted to me, whenever we met for the last money lab conference. And I I had not realized that you were the author of the book that he gave me until, I think, maybe after you moved in or started staying at my place. But so in the book, you interview a lot of kind of, like, leading researchers in the
world of platforms. Can I say platform studies? Sure. Sure. That's a a growing field that is trying to be institutionalized, let's say. Mhmm. But it was media studies before, but now, it has rebranded, let's say, and try to differentiate itself as platform studies.
But in each interview, you ask, each researcher or kind of group of researchers that you're interviewing, what is a platform? So yeah. So I'm going to return the question to you as I can book, what is a platform to help people understand what that is, and as well if you can explain maybe the also this concept of platformization.
Sure. Yeah. So I ask, two questions actually. One is what is a platform, which is kind of the ontological question. And the the second one is what metaphor would you use to describe a platform? And so the point was basically that, you know, for now platforms, they have been they've they've been around for, like, at least fifteen years. But, you know, to describe this, like, kind of digital entities or digital organizations, several researchers in different fields, for example, infrastructure studies, software studies, political economy, legal studies. They were using different words, and they were kind of referring to the same concept, but some of them they were calling, you know, ecosystem creators. Some of them they were calling platforms. Some of them they are calling, their other names. And so the platform really is, for me, kind of this it started as a metaphor, of course, driven by the corporate world, like some entities at the beginning of the 02/2010. They wanted to be seen as platform because of the flatness of the platforms to kind of to avoid responsibility. But then, you know, the term got used more and more also inside academia. And so, like, scholars have been trying to kind of turn to re semanticize. I don't know if you can say this in English, but to give a different meaning to it. And so you have several definitions. Now the definition I I I like that I kind of create is like a platform. It is a marketplace. It is a market, but within the market, capital m. So so we know that in economic theories, markets are kind of complex systems which are fully decentralized, at least, for example, in the sense of Hayek and the also school of economics. But with platforms, there are markets that are actually infrastructures. Right? And this infrastructure is used to lure two groups into, its ecosystem. And one group at least two groups, let's say, because it's a multisale. And one group is, for for example, producing services, and the other group is using, these services. So let's think about Uber, for example. But, you know, this is environment is now a market within a market in the sense that it is controlled. And the platform itself as this infrastructure has an authority to to kind of manage the relationship. So it can do things like, you know, curation, moderation, you know, account suspension, and, like, changing the the code behind it so that some action can be enforced. Right? So, of course, this makes it very, very problematic for, I will say, the entire western tradition, you know, that try to limit or regulate the power of companies. Because here we are dealing with companies, if you want, that have acquired infrastructural properties. Right? So so that's that makes it problematic. So that was kind of the introductory answer, but if if you wanna if you wanna go to to the definitions, we can we can give three definitions. So one is, like, from a material point of view, let's say, it is an infrastructure. And this infrastructure, it distributes interfaces in the population. This is like, for example, the definition of Braton. So everybody is holding as marshall in their hands. And these these interfaces, they are kind of the point of contact between the platform as as a system governance and users. Right? So so it's it's a way to coordinate people in space and time and to synchronize, you know, services and people together. And that's kind of the materialistic definition. And then you have the managerial definition because, like, platform studies, they actually originate, in this in in management, and they say, okay. Platforms are infrastructure to produce and extract value. So, I mean, it is pretty pretty obvious in the end. I mean, if you use, any platform, value is produced for you because, I don't know, you can you can get to a certain point using Google Maps. You can find a a new partner on dating apps. So value is produced, but then a part of this value is taken, is extracted. So he's it's it's very interesting here how, like, managers, you know, and, like, Marxist scholar, they kind of agree on the definition of the platform. So but for one, it's a good new viable business model. And for the other, it's like, very bad continuation of capitalist, extractive practices. And then, like, the the definition that I've already mentioned by by the Amsterdam scholars is more this reprogrammable digital infrastructures, you know, that use data and that can monetize these data. And, yeah, I do conclude that platformization is actually more interesting as a process. Right? Because one of the characteristics of platform, let's say, is that they they constantly change. They can their infrastructure on fire. They someone said, they change very fast. And so, you know, even if, like, dominant platforms as, like, Google or others, even if they they are kind of gonna they they can kind of decline and they can be changed by some other platforms, The organizational form, the organizational model behind it, it's probably still gonna be the same. So this multisided infrastructure. And so pratormization is is I think it's a good concept because it it grasps precisely these. Right? We have a new organizational form which is gonna stay with us for the next decades, maybe.
Mhmm. When you say organizational forms, does it is this specific to, like, tech VC backed usually platforms? Is that what you have in mind as far as the organizational form or the way or and the process of a platform or not necessarily?
Yeah. What I that's kind of my PhD thesis. Right? It's like okay. By a conditional form, I mean, an abstract model that you can apply, like, as a mental schema if you want. Like, you have some dynamics, you know, in societal dynamics, and you and you can ask yourself, alright. Now can I platform that? Can I build a platform to perform that function? Right? And that is, as as I said, is very abstract, but it's also precisely what kind of cybernetic thinking, you know, which is like the genealogy of digital platform. They it also comes from there in my opinion. Mhmm. It's it's what cybernetic is all about, like, finding very abstract patterns, right, and then apply them in different situations and trying to see, you know, what what's what's similar. And and so and so I mean, this model is both a new model of governance, and this is kind of all the platform governance discourse, the algorithmic governance discourse, but also a new economic model. And, of course, these things are, like, tidally related because as again, if if before, in, let's say, in the twentieth century, the dichotomy was between planned economic and Market economy. Market economy. Yeah. Here, you know, platforms, they really blur this distinction. Right? Because they are both emergent and planned. And the difference here is, of course, is the distribution of interfaces plus software. That's what really makes the difference. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah. For me, I think there's I I like to say that, like, almost the difference between markets and planned economy are not so different as we sometimes think in many ways that, you know, in many ways, billionaires are the planners of our economy or can be. But kind of what the way that I sometimes think about platforms is also as almost like a form of digital enclosure, either enclosed inside a digital space. And this is and this relates to kind of, like, this narrative around web one, web two, web three, where, you know, web three, although it is, like, still in my view, a lot of it is just like a marketing term. But they try to bring this criticism of web two as being, like, you know, walled gardens and which a lot of it is true. It's just that, you know, there are other criticisms of web three. But, yeah, can we think of platforms as a kind of digital enclosure? I'm always trying to make, like, the the relation to, like, the the closure of the commons, like, in the creation of capitalism in The UK is, like, the common story. It's not exactly a parallel, but does that does that work as a as a metaphor to you?
Yeah. That's a very interesting topic, I think. The intersection between like, let's say, at the beginning with the with the Internet one point zero, you know, of course, they were already talking about Microsoft, you know, and, like, or versus Linux or and the the second enclosure movement that there's there's a paper on that. And, yeah, for sure, you can kind of conceptualize the initial drive to kind of decentralize, you know, when the the commercial Internet started with a second phase, which is like a basically platform capitalism, right, which is the web two point zero, which is characterized by recentralization. I mean, of course, the the platform, it both centralizes and decentralizes at the same time. But in terms of, like, economic in in terms of governance, it's much more centralized, And that's problematic in in many, many ways. And then web three point zero, of course, tries to again say no. Now we have a new technology, and we have to to start again, you know, with with the same drive to to to decentralize. And that's yeah. I mean, that's in theory, that's that's right. Then I'm I'm not, like, 100 in favor of full full decentralization. I'm like, I think that platforms so the point is, like, you know, many authors, they're like, okay. Platforms are bad per se because they create these enclosures and because they are extractive, and we should not even look at that model. Right? But in my opinion, there's it's too it's too late for that. Let's say that from an evolutionary point of view, platforms are probably here to stay. Yeah. And so the question is, how do we create different platforms? Right? But, but I'm not against the use of software, you know, in governance. So how do we create different platforms that they can redistribute value? Right? They they can instead of keeping 30% like the app stores, how what if we give it back to the ecosystem? Right? And that's, of course, a complicated question. I like to to to think of platforms as something that can be applied at very different levels. So you can make a platform for your own community at, you know, a local level. Mhmm. And that can be useful for for many different things, like for voting, for deciding the governance structure, or you can have, like, huge platforms, you know, I don't know, like WeChat in China. And and basically, you have your entire life inside those platforms. And and the the the metaphor that I use is, like, the platform world. Mhmm. It's like a world you inhabit. And I mean, from a socialist perspective, you know, if if someone gives me good services, I, you know, I'm maybe willing to to accept that that there are, like, huge platform that kind of govern my life if I get something back.
Yeah. There's what was I gonna say? To me, when you say that you said the earlier thing that a platform could it could be an enclosure in the sense that there's a just depends on the governance inside the platform to determine whether or not, you know, it's more like one or the other.
While I was researching these, I was asking myself this question, which is like so if we have, like, you know, the the definition of the of the common as this, like, common resource that has to be managed, then, you know, the platform and the mechanism of governance, it is itself a common if you want. Right? Yeah. Because, like, the if if you if you build, like, a platform, like, a software based infrastructure for for manage a common, that that is also a common. Right? So so there's, like, this this relationship in which it really kind of, you know, how you say, you you
yeah, you you you completely changed the situation. And that and now and now the platform can be used for for managing the common. Yeah. No. Maybe since we're already kind of, like, getting into that point, I would love to hear from you kind of, like, maybe a little bit more about the history of platforms as being coming from, like, the socialist tradition. We've talked a little bit about it sounds a bit counterintuitive to a lot of people. When people think about platforms, they think of, like, tech VC hyper extractive kinda infrastructures, but instead, actually, there is a lot of, let's say, platform history in the socialist movement. Could we say that?
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I've kind of divided the genealogy of the platform in, two main branches, and one comes from the managerial part. But the other one, it's really comes from the attempts of communist and socialist country to provide a better form of planning via computers. So there are two main historical examples, and one is, in The Soviet Union in the sixties. You know, it's like after the birth of cybernetics with Wiener and, like, as a science. That that that things was at the beginning bond in in the Soviet Union because it was like an American,
pseudo science. But Could you maybe define cybernetics briefly for people in case they don't know? Yeah. Impossible to define define, briefly, cybernetics because it's
the size of everything and nothing if you want. But, I mean, historically, it has been I mean, the cybernetic movements, there were a bunch of, like, interdisciplinary researchers that, in the fifties, they they made the messy conference, the legendary messy conferences, and they wanted kind of to find a common language for all sciences. So, like, physics, psychiatry, biology, and they were kind of talking to each other through via metaphors. But but then cybernetics, it's it's also somehow very much related to the military apparatus in a sense. It it is also the science of observing systems or of systems that have a goal. There are really many definitions.
Mhmm. I think of it just kinda like a universal language for talking about systems abstractly, whether that is biological, whether that is technical, whether that is
social, whatever else. Yeah. Sure. Sure. I mean, at the beginning, it was very much focused on, like, the concept of feedbacks and positive and negative effects, and it was kind of a metaphysical principle of the universe. But then it it became a little bit mechanistic, if you want. And then there is a second order cybernetics that turned it upside down, and it and then it became, as what I was saying, the science of observing systems. And there are I mean, cybernetics and system theory is is applied basically everywhere. Right? And in my case, I've studied especially social system theory as developed by sociologists, the German sociologists, Niklas Luhmann. Mhmm. Yeah. But to come back to the genealogy come to the social genealogy of platforms, we were saying that in in the Soviet Union, they wanted to use computer to make political planning more efficient. And in the sixties, there was also the attempt to buy what I we we can very well call call a platform. But in in that case, you know, you had, like, huge computers and they were super expensive. But the idea of the Soviet Union was to, kind of place these computers in all the critical cities and then start collecting data about the population, so that the population could be controlled better, basically. Right? Of course, kind of a dystopian nightmare. But, you know, then this emergent pattern, we we can say, they could have been used in in the idea of some Soviet subneticians to provide, like, quasi market stimuli stimuli to the Soviet economy. So, of course, like, you know, if you set the price of bread too low or too high, it's kind of a problem. So why don't we use computer to make it this this this thing much more efficient? The right price of bread. For example, now you have something called bread chain for that. But but actually so this is the more this this topic example, but the other one is more famous and it's cyber scene. Right? Yeah. So it's and cyber scene is one of the foundational meats of the cyber left. Also, now nowadays, there's some people that are like, yeah. You've chosen a story in which, you know, the good left is they die. As your foundational meter, that is not useful. Right. But it's really a great story. And, I mean, there's also there's also models of telling it, but the the the good book is the one from Ed and Medina. And and there, you know, there was this contact in which the democratically elected Salvador Allende, the president of Chile. He called Staufferbier, the inventor of management. And Staufferbier, he he was leading this team to build a platform for managing managing the nationalized economy. And so, of course, they had very rudimental computers, and they they were slow and everything. But the basic idea is that we connect all the factories. Right? And then we we kinda see what the appointed official, which are the managers, right, of the factories, what they're what they're doing to the workers. So this could be used as a technology to to protect the workers. And the in the idea of staff for workers, could kind of vote anonymously through analogical means how happy they were from, like, on a an aggregated data about happiness could then be used for by the government for making investigations in factories that in in which people were unhappy. Right? So so this is like, I think, a cool example that shows, you know, how you can kind of do the social technical engineering, which is for the people, you know, instead of for for profit. Of course, this is a double edged sword because you I mean, it it presupposes the good government. Right? Otherwise, it's automatically a dystopian. But, ultimately, this is, like, always the case with digital technologies, I think, with you you have, like if you have, like when you're inside the platform, everything is already quantified. Everything Mhmm. Is already datified. If you take away that dimension, which is both a dimension, you know, of control, for sure, but also a dimension in which you can kind of see the emergent will of the people. Right? Mhmm. So stuff for Bill used to say that, you know, finally, we have a way so that the people can tell the government what they want, and the government can know in real time what people want instead of using, like like, what we still do nowadays, which is, like, pools for elections and stuff like this. Yeah. So so so that's that's that's kind of interesting, I think. And and in terms of planned economy, you know, what we've seen is that huge platforms like Google, they have operationalized this model. Or, I mean, in in terms of CyberSim, the the perfect example is Amazon. Like, Amazon has these logistical omniscience, and you can see everything that goes on. Right? You've probably read, like, People's Republic of Walmart or Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And that, yeah. And and so the point is that when we when we think about markets, right, that within the market that can be planned, that is the socialist legacy of platformization. And and that is also why many liberals I'm I'm quoting one over all others because her book is very famous, which is so Susanna Zuboff. They're very angry at platforms because platforms, they can see the invisible hand. Right? So they're, you know, like, in this kind of liberal
idea, capitalism is kinda You're not supposed to be able to plan these things, like, in a in a in a liberal market world. What are you doing? But she wrote what's what's the book? The Age of Surveillance Capitalism? Exactly. You know? Yeah. So, I mean,
in that liberal idea, like, the state is there for ensuring, you know, that there is a competition, the right competition, and it's like and and now they're like, oh, but this is unfair, you know, because you are controlling the market, and you're you're, like, fixing prices through algorithms and stuff like that. And, of course, yeah, it's that's why kind of the entire political spectrum as something as a reason to be angry against platforms, if you want. Mhmm. But also for some I mean, from a more kind of market perspective, they're saying, well, this is literally what has been going on for, like, centuries. Right? Creation of of monopolies and stuff like that. So it's I think it that's also something I try to do in the book, like, to trace the line of what's new and what's not new with the rise of platforms. It's a very delicate question, I would say. Yeah.
So, I mean, based on your research on platforms, what do you think there is to learn from them by the left? You know, should we, I mean, I guess you kind of answered this earlier, but, like, should we oppose platforms or co opt platforms or, yeah. How do you see that?
Yeah. Yeah. That's a big question. Well, let's say that, of course, the situation we are now is basically we have delegated some of the main function, you know, that before they were, performed by public infrastructures to private infrastructures that are private digital platforms.
Would you say that the public infrastructures that existed before platforms kind of maybe took over a particular service, they would not be considered a platform?
No. They were not platforms. So, I mean, of course, that all depends on the definition of platform. Like, the the our technological definition is basically super broad because a supermarket is a platform then, and and stuff like this. Yeah. Because it has to You're you're inside my apartment platform. Platform. Exactly. Yeah. That's why the critic is like, the platform is an empty signifier if you want. But what what was I gonna say? What was the question? Oh, whether we should oppose or co opt platforms. No. No. No. No. I was saying, about the infrastructure kind of thing. What's different is, like like, it's really the historical trajectory because there's one very good paper that, I recommend everyone reading is called by Plantin and, another group of researchers. And in which they trace, you know, the the the history of what they call the modern infrastructural ideal. And to summarize it, like, we can say that, you know, when things when stand standards, they started to emerge in terms of, like, you know, electricity standard for plugging plugging in or, say, trains. You know, there was, like, the state and the oh, fuck. So I start again. So when when they they they were emerging, states were like, okay. We should either nationalize this or turn it in a highly regulated monopoly. Right? And so there were there were these figures like the system builders, large technical system builders. But with platforms, there are at least two reasons for why this didn't happen, and one is the rise of personal computing. Right? Everybody in the nineties were as in the from the nineties onwards, they start to have to use these computers and the neoliberal momentum. Right? All the regulations from the Reagan era, Thatcher era onwards, they were losing. So so these two factors, they they led according to the these authors to the decline of the modern infrastructural ideas ideal. And that meaning that now you have this ecosystem builders. Right? Mhmm. And these ecosystem builders, they perform, a public function. Right? But they're a product company driven by profit. And I really think we haven't understand the extent to which this, like, thing is problematic. It is extremely problematic. We are not witnessing yet its its full consequences, I think. While, you know, in China, we have seen a different trajectory. There are still infrastructures. They are trying to be somehow controlled by the state, But then, of course, they are sometimes with it, sometimes against it. And again, it is there's all the problem of surveillance, but we we see a different way of achieving what is sometimes called a technological sovereignty. But but but this thing is is very complicated because if you wanna put it in, like, internationalist term, you know, like that, you know, normally the answers are like, okay. Then we want our technological for example, in Europe because we don't want Chinese or American interest to to get into it. But then we have to become nationalists again sometimes somehow. Right? So it's it's really it's really complicated.
Maybe then I think it would be interesting to talk a bit about the geopolitics of platforms Yeah. And, like, the regulation. I mean, that's something that you have a lot of experience in in the European context. There's the other book that Gerd Lovink gave me that I think is that I thought was really interesting was oh, it's called was it Manufactured in China, Designed in California, and Criticized in Europe? I feel like it's that's I thought that that was, like, a such a good title and, like, really summed summed a lot of things up for me because it seems to me that in The US, you have this dominant power and capability of these companies being able to create kind of technology and technological products, also heavily reliant on on Asia and China. And then in Europe, there's kind of like it doesn't have this huge venture capital tech ecosystem, but it does have the European Union. And it is almost like the gatekeepers of the largest market in the world. So it has, certain powers, which it succeeds or not in in kind of doing, especially in the context of platforms, which is, like, has been radically and rapidly kind of changing the way we live our lives and and and, you know, contribute to the economy.
Yeah. So I think it's useful to contextualize this on the Europe at the European level because, I mean, the European Union, and we talk about this in the book, has some very specific reason, right, to to regulate platforms. And one is the lack of, you know, political power. We, as a European Union, we are a union which is only half political. We we kind of, we we are not completely done with the process of integration, so hopefully, we will achieve it. But we use regulation, right, as a political tool in in so and so it's it's also very much about, like, the self description of European identity. Right? So it's like, we are Europe. You know? We have the most kind of the best social welfare state, you know, and we wanna those are our values. We wanna keep on, you know, doing that. And so what we do, we have these platforms that are they're Chinese, they're American, but, you know, they're not gonna act as they want in Europe. We are gonna regulate them. Right? And this, for me, of course, it's it's necessary in a sense, but it's very hypocritical because, again, you end up by doing what I call the institutionalization of digital platforms, which is a faustian pact if you want. And on one side, they say, okay. Sure. Google, you're allowed to continue to offer your services and extract from European citizens. But on the other side, if you wanna continue, you gotta kinda follow some of the rules. Right? So if you suspend one account, you you gotta go to an independent body, and then you you have to change your internal structure to handle all these cases. And then, you know, you, Amazon, you cannot be at the same time the competitor, direct competitor in your marketplace of the people selling some products. So from from a geopolitical point of view, the European Union is using regulation as a way, that's my opinion, of course, to force foreign companies to spend more money in the European Union. Or let's see let let's say this is the side effect of regulation. Like, Google will now have to hire an entire team of consultants that are very experts
about the GDPR.
The for example, that me. And they have they have to pay them a lot of money. And, yeah, this money, they will come back to the EU some say EU sometimes. But, of course, the the standards of protection are also higher than in The US. Yeah. But in The US, you know, the president can take a decision just by his own that can directly affect the businesses. Right? And in Europe, they they can't do that, basically. Right.
Yeah. It does it so it's I mean, if I understand correctly, like, you get to be by by following you get to follow the big rules of Europe. You get to join the largest market in the world. But in that process as well, it almost seems to me that I get prevents that the institutionalization almost prevents new platforms from from being able to be creator entering into enter into the European market where, like, China is taking the approach where they have, like, the firewall. And then they have been able to create their own technology platform industry, which, I don't know, my view is was probably the right choice to make if you're China from a geopolitical point of view, whether or not you agree or disagree with censorship or whatever else. They're much better off having their own platforms than American ones inside their country when they're in such an adversarial, relationship. But Europe has kind of, like, accepted American companies to completely dominate tech technology in Europe, it seems to me. Like, there's not so many like, I can't think off the top of my head too many European, like, tech platform companies.
Sure. I mean and that's extremely problematic, no, in terms of Technological sovereignty. For sure. And, I mean, also because, like so two points. One, if you now have this institutionalized very large platforms, then they can provide a lot of services and handle a lot of requests, you know, then, yeah, it's it can be more difficult for competitors to to to deep platform them. We you you actually they they actually say in there's a specific word in management. I don't remember right now and I know. But, you know, there is competition between platforms, but it is not as competition between normal companies if you want. So, and now and now the the other problem is that, you know, as soon as our platforms kind of poses a threat, then, of course, they're gonna buy it, basically. Yeah. They're gonna buy it, then it's it's gonna it's gonna be part of the ecosystem. So that's one thing. But the other thing is that so now we have seen some kind of European platforms trying to be developed as for example, there's an Italian one that has received the venture capital from the Silicon Valley. It's called the Uno Bravo, and it's for, you know, psychology. And so this is kind of where I think we can still act in a sense because, you know, there are some fields that haven't been platformized yet. Right? If you think about care I mean, there are many, many platforms or you think about, you know, like, medical services. We don't have one super platform that is managing them all. And in that sense, I really believe that we should provide, let's say, public platforms for that or at least, you know, you want them to be build from the very beginning with a governance structures that includes not only the businesses, but also the the public sector and, like, the civil sector, like civil society. So you want them to have a multistake governance. And I think it's very reasonable, especially when it is about these topics like, you know, health, which are absolutely fundamental. It's like the the most fundamental of human rights. Right? If you don't have health, you
Yeah. Tell that tell that to America. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I one of the things that I, yeah, would hope that Europe would do more to perhaps still fit within this framework that it's in of, you know, needing to differentiate itself is just more, I don't know, platform cooperatives, more, yeah, platforms of of care, ones that are not VC backed but sustainable and not perhaps maybe even, like, necessarily directed by the state in the Chinese way, but I haven't really seen so much of it, but, you know, there are people working on it. So I want to get to the crypto parts at least while you're here. For you, what do you think crypto brings to kinda like this problem space of of platforms? I know you, yeah, we've since you've been here, we've been talking a lot about crypto. So I don't know if any of that has, like, changed your thoughts about it since beforehand or whatever else.
Yeah. No. I I'm pretty amazed by the development of the the crypto space, let's say, because I was looking at in into it in two thousand eighteen as a consultant, but Ethereum was not there yet or at least not Yeah. Now. And, yeah, I was really amazed by how that thing has been developing. So first of all, I see a continuation between platformization and, you know, the blockchain space in a sense. Yeah. That's for two reasons. One, many blockchain services, they self describe as platforms. And that makes sense. Right? Because it's this common denominator to describe, like, this governance power that you acquire through software from a centralized standpoint. And, that's one reason. And the second reason is it's because their business model, it is about connecting different groups. Right? And in in one single space. But then there are also, like, some differences because, you know, this the properties of the blockchain, for example, public by default and, you know, potentially decentralized, they allow for the for building different platforms in which which are, I mean, the governance structure, it can be kind of personalized if you want. You can you can use a blockchain, I don't know, layer one, and then you can build your own governance structure on it. And that's really cool. And, and also the ownership structure, you can, you can, you know, decide decide how it is. And that is like a build your own platform kind of thing. It's it's something Everyone gets a platform. Sure. I mean, everybody's own platform. Right? And no, that's that's kind of kind of interesting from, so so I think the inter the intersection between platformization and the blockchain space, it can be very generative even if you were and other people are describing it as protocolization rather than platformization, because you wanna underline the fact that it's, you know, decentralized. But then it's about, you know, we should understand ourselves in terms of which words we're using. Maybe we we mean the same thing.
Yeah. Yeah. No. It's I mean, one of the things that has been interesting is that, like you said earlier, everyone across the political spectrum can hate a plat can hate platforms, whatever point of view you took it. And, yeah, I mean, crypto comes from a kind of, like, pretty libertarian place, a lot of software engineers, tech people, who did have a criticism about platforms to a large extent. And especially, I mean, they were, let's say maybe they were turned off. You know, I'm thinking in the mind of a libertarian, like they were turned off by the socialism of platforms in other areas, you know, like their, their association of just like surveillance with, with communist states, even though, like, America is probably doing, just as much as a surveillance, if not more. So it is interesting that that, you know, it doesn't matter what political spectrum you came from, but, you know, they at least produced something different and have there is now an infrastructure for it. It's certainly not perfect and it's certainly not the answer to everything, but it has, like, opened up the space in a way that I think, I don't know. The the left is just behind on Sure. Is is what I find. And so, like, the discourse that I often have like, I was recently on a podcast for a friend of mine who's a left wing content creator, and it was recently published. And still today, I mean, you get comment after comment after comment of, you know, online left people being, I don't know, just, like, completely wrong information about about crypto, and it's hard to, like, debunk every single one of them every time or, like, in the comments or whatever. But, no, but it is it is, interesting to to hear you say that.
No. But I think also, you know, that somehow the crypto world has to come to terms with the fact that if he wants to be also institutionalized, you know, in the long term. I mean, of course, you can you can kind of stay outside of the of the state. You wanna stay outside of, institutions. And and for many people, this is kind of exactly the point, right, of crypto. But then if you want if you want to think about blockchain technologies as being indeed the, you know, in existing institutions to make them better if you want or to make or to to change our governance structure, that's I think that's also very interesting. No? And so that's what you use in your book as the shift from, like, the monetary slash financial function of, like, metaphor of crypto to the one a more economic coordination. Right? And I I think that that is that is it's it's very interesting. And so but coming to terms with that, it it means also kind of to forget about the very libertarian origin of the blockchain. Right? Sure. Yeah. So you you have to so for example, I was kind of amazed by the code and law debate Right. Right. And how it has entered the crypto world because that is a very famous debate for, like, scholars of law and technology. Mhmm. And Lessing was talking about it, and then it developed. But, I mean, no lawyer would ever think that code by itself can, you know, do everything and can govern any kind of system by itself. So, yes, code is absolutely not law. And it's we can very well acknowledge that code has brought many, many new like, has completely changed the way governance is achieved at nowadays, and at the same time saying that it's not all about it because you will need, like, a legal infrastructure behind it. You will, you you will need governance, which is human governance, you know, and you will leave you will need this spot resolution mechanisms and that you just do don't do that through a smart contract.
Not yet. But yeah. No. This this is actually one of the this is a topic that, was the focus for my for my book course last night on code is law, and that was, yeah, the thing that kind of everybody came to the conclusion to was that, yeah, you just can't with with code, it can be useful in a lot of different ways, but it cannot be to to think that it's going to substitute. We're just going to, you know, forget all the centuries of thinking and philosophy around law and, like, just turn it into code is kind of like a silly notion
to begin with. Yeah. But on the other hand, we were I know we were discussing this the other day. I find interesting, you know, how code and how software, how it can be how it is tied to a certain kind of platonic vision of trying to build the perfect governance governable city. Right? Where they where they call Calibe, the beautiful city in which, you know, the the governors are chosen with sortition. Right? And between, like, the population, like, the people that can be elected, right, can be sortition. And, of course, with software, you can very well do that. Right? And and software, it's very, very good at creating categories of the world, you know, and subcategories and then putting an if then. But and so it's I mean, there's I see a continuity between some kind of very anti democratic ideas and the possibility to build these the systems through software.
Yeah. Sure. Yeah. It's a double edged sword, like, you said. But, no. Yeah. We I think it was interesting just because I think the context is interesting because you're saying that and when we were speaking the other day that this was this idea of sortition and the citizen's assembly is a big part of Extinction Rebellion. Yeah. Exactly. But in that context, it was completely kind of manual, I guess, how people were kind of doing these citizen assemblies and this sortition. And so we were kind of like talking about like, why this is something that can, that can be mechanized in some way, which do digital means. Either mechanizes mechanized in the sense of doing sortition Mhmm. Or rethinking the entire problem, which was like, I think you told me that like sortition was meant to be something of like, you know, you get a representation of the populace and then they make a decision and that would represent the populace because they are representative of them. But instead, with digital technologies, we can also just completely forget that idea and just get input from everybody Yeah. If we if we want to.
Yeah. The the the problem with sortition is that you have to choose which people can be sortition. Right? And and then you need somehow to to a a perfect representation of all the divisions, you know, of class race in the population. That's that is very problematic in a sense in in many senses, actually. But that also something that can be optimized through software, like, very easily, I will say. So so, yeah, there are interesting intersection between, like, the political revindications of radical ecological movements in the in the extinction rebellion, for example, is proposing to go beyond politics that brought us here, you know, stuck, with the climate collapse by, you know, declaring citizens' assemblies and in which, you know, some sortation people, they are deciding on what to do about the climate crisis based on the some briefing made by experts, made by scientists. Right? So you have scientists and you have you have, like, the jury of the people choosing. And yeah. And so you wanna you wanna use sortition, which is which on the other hand is a way, you know, to avoid responsibility. In fact, sortition is is normally used in the legal system, like, when you have, you know, the jury in the criminal procedures and stuff like that, and not in the political system. Because if you're a sortition, guess what? You're not responsible for your actions. Right. So it's like We did, like, a sortition of, like, senators in the government or something like that or, like, is that what kind of what you're referring to? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You then you're not you know, you you don't have to say, I will do this. And then the the the people, they actually see that you haven't fulfill, you know, the provinces, that you have responsibility. You okay. I was sortition. You know? It's like so you Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You this is like a a way in which politics renounces, you know, to its function. But on the other hand, you know, we have seen that this kind of politic is not working. And so maybe to use sortition could actually be a way to do something, to take some action. Right? And, again, it's it's a very problematic and complicated topic, but, the the intersection between the climate crisis and and software or blockchain comes back in many senses. For example, when we we talk about, you know, regenerative finance in a sense. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
I thought you were gonna say something else.
I'm not going. I just wrote it. Smart. I just wrote it.
I just wrote it. I know it. Cool. Yeah. I mean, we're about a bit a bit over an hour. Okay. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention in this interview? Yeah. No. I mentioned,
the part in which we say, like, what can we do about platforms? Maybe I haven't really answered your question if you like. If you stay outside inside platforms. So maybe I can I can I can because I was talking about something else? Maybe I can talk about that. Yeah. Maybe we can we can talk about the future of platformization or something.
Sure. What
had No. Like, I don't know. What do you think?
I mean, I actually, yes. I'm curious to hear from you how do you see the future of platformization. I mean, perhaps even with this now kind of, like, a curveball added into the mix of of blockchain and crypto. Because I can also imagine that, that we already see this, especially in, I mean, Reddit is one one example of this, but platforms using crypto as part of their platformization in some capacity by creating, you know, their own point systems, their own coins, their own tokens, and such is a part of the equation. And then the other part of the equation is, like, also the existence of alternatives at the same time to some degree.
Yeah. I mean, in the the very logic of platform competition imposes this, like, race in which you wanna swallow everything, you know, and include the new technology into your embedded into your ecosystem before the others. That's why we've seen, like, AI get rapidly adopted by, like, every platform it takes. Exactly. Exactly. And, also, they wanna make they wanna kind of continuously make new bets about the technology that will be implemented. And, eventually, if they get it right, they they they take the place of the platform before. You know? So so that's for sure happening. And, again, I see this as kind of this institutionalization of the the crypto world. Right? Because once they enter the highly platform world and once they you allow, like, normie users, you know, to to exchange crypto inside platforms that, you know, that is also being institutionalized and normalized in a sense. So this is for sure. But then I I really think we should we there's a lot of space. And, I mean, platform is platforms, they have been around for, like I mean, big platforms, let's say, big tech for, like, let's say, since the since Google came. In thirty years? Like, twenty, thirty years? Yeah. Yeah. And and so there's there's much space. I think we we would need, you know, exceptional intervention. I'm I'm I'm not saying like China, but I'm not okay with living with public infrastructures in the end of private companies. I'm not okay with that. Sure. And I think, like, European Union should, like, you know, really it's about what the in the you guys in The USA, national security that allows you to do whatever you want. It's about that. But, on the other hand, there is this need to experiment with this governance structures or, from a bottom bottom up perspective. So there's also need to finance, you know, because if you don't have venture capital, you wanna have public money. You wanna have, crowdfunding of some sort, and you wanna build these these things. And then, of course, with all the contradiction because, I mean, the model world is so entangled that even this distinction that we're making between, you know, The US and China and Europe, they kind of they blur when in when you go to practical stuff because there there are, I don't know, like, sovereign he found that they they have invested in that. Right? And and a lot of the production, it is made for The US, and then the service is provided for The US. They are for European citizen. So it's it's really complicated, but but I think we need to experiment more. Yeah.
Yep. Yep. Well, thanks so much, Gianmarco, for coming and summarizing all the conversations that we've been having, like, the past couple of weeks. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being at my house.
Yeah. Thank you for hosting me. I hope I hope you enjoyed the Italian cuisine.
Definitely.