Most of my research is conducted under the umbrella of the Decentralization Research Center, https://thedrcenter.org/, where I am a Senior Researcher and Writer, and with whom I’ve published the papers below.
What is governance and how does it affect the ways we interact with technology and one another? This is the basic question at the heart of what I have been researching over the past three years. One of the amazing things about governance is that it is possibly dull, definitely unsexy and yet determines so much of what we do in the world, from questions of wealth inequality to the collapse of democracies, from the algorithmic governance of our daily lives to feelings of alienation online. Technologies are never neutral, nor are the governance systems that lead to their creation and production. How technologies are designed, from the organizations that build them to the end product in your hand and on your screen fundamentally determines what work they will do and for whose benefit. I ask some of the following questions when thinking about governance and technology: How can technology help rather than undermine democracies? How can technologies be designed to function for the public good? What does democractic governance of technologies look like? How can new technologies enable new forms of collaborative creation and ownership? How can technologies enable new forms of democracy? These broad-brush questions have led to the more specific questions addressed in the papers below and in the papers we are currently working on: How do we protect against AI-generated disinformation campaigns? Can we update cooperatives to compete with Big Tech in the digital era? How can Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) be used for more equitable ownership and governance practices? How do online status and value systems increase inequality and what can be done to ameliorate those effects? How can antitrust law and blockchain work in concert with one another? I have had the great fortune of working with experts in various fields to write the two papers below answering some of those questions. To see the work I am currently working on, please refer to the “WIP” (work in progress) section in the navigation bar. It is currently password protected and only available to the jury adjudicating this portfolio.