Looks Like New

While digital privacy issues often get a lot of attention and even alarmism, it rarely seems to change behavior. Even if it did, do individual choices really make a difference? Amie Stepanovich is a veteran policy expert and advocate who argues that we need to think about these questions not just as individuals but as a society. She is executive director of Silicon Flatirons a center on technology and law at the University of Colorado Boulder. Before that, she worked in policy roles at Access Now and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

There is a kind of dream out there that, once we get the gizmos set up just right, work will be transformed. While many speculate about this, Kevin Owocki, founder of the Colorado-based startup Gitcoin, is in the thick of it. Not only is Gitcoin trying to create a new way for software developers to get paid, it is using blockchain technology to re-imagine how we steward and fund freely available public goods.

This month, Spanish activist Stacco Troncoso and his collaborators released the DisCO Manifesto (disco.coop), which proposes a new model for organizations that account for the care work that supports workers and their communities. In this conversation, he explains how the model works and how it challenges norms, both in familiar workplaces and in techno-utopian visions. Troncoso is a founding member of the Guerrilla Media Collective, which is pioneering the DisCO concept.

Unicorns are mythical animals. It’s also the name for a mythical idea that drives the tech startup economy. In that context, a unicorn is the rare $1 billion company that makes the whole system of widespread crashing-and-burning seem to work. Is there another way? Mara Zepeda is a co-founder of Zebras Unite, a network that is working to create a more ethical and inclusive startup ecosystem. She is also a co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, a startup that makes software that helps communities share resources and opportunities.

We might not think about textiles as advanced technology, but in fact it was textile looms that helped inspire the designs of the earliest computers. This month we hear from Steven Frost, is an artist and an instructor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, who hosts the Colorado Sewing Rebellion at the Boulder Public Library. He talks about the transgressive potential of threads and the transformative power of repair.

The priorities of community journalism have often come into conflict with corporate priorities—something we know well in Colorado. A new publication, the Colorado Sun, has attempted to protect its mission by incorporating as a public benefit corporation. As part of the Sun’s first annual evaluation, co-founder and senior editor Dana Coffield discusses what the Sun has accomplished in its first year and how the company balances with its business imperatives with its social purpose.

More and more people feel uncomfortable with the role of big tech companies in their everyday lives, but they don’t feel they have any other option. System76 is trying to change that. It’s a Denver-based computer company that produces its own computers, and its own open-source operating system, here in Colorado. Emma Marshall is System76’s Happiness Manager, and she talks about what it means to be part of a company that helps create more empowered computer users.

Educators today feel pressured to keep up with the latest technology, and big tech companies are eager to turn that pressure into a market for themselves. This week’s guest, Erin Glass, is a digital scholarship librarian at the University of California, San Diego, where she works to develop student-centered, community-driven practices around educational technology. She has been involved in many innovative projects at the intersection of research, learning, and tech, including a new platform, EthicalEdTech.info.

Longmont, Colorado is considering a new way of funding news—through a proposed library-district tax. This idea builds on a model, the Community Information District, first proposed by Simon Galperin. This month on Looks Like New, Galperin describes his vision for “info districts” as not just a means of funding news but as a pathway toward a more participatory, democratic culture.

We’re in a moment of crisis for democracy around the world. But democracy doesn’t just need defense. Santiago Siri believes it needs a better offense—to evolve in order to address the shortcomings that led to the crisis in the first place. In his native Buenos Aires, he was a founder of Partido de la Red, an internet-based political party that tried to hack the representative system with direct voter participation. Now, he is working with the blockchain technology that underlies Bitcoin to bring democratic practices into everyday life. His latest experiment has been to help the Democratic caucus of the Colorado state House of Representatives choose their priorities for the coming session.