https://dighum.wien/programme/#session-sustaining-digital-commons

Friday, June 26, 16:00 –17:30

Sustaining Digital Commons

The future of open knowledge stewardship

Chair: Katja Mayer (Senior Scientist at the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI) and Sociologist at the University of Vienna)
with:
Sandra Barthel (Interdisciplinary Researcher and Policy Advisor)
Claudia Garád (President of Wikimedia Europe and Executive Director of Wikimedia Austria)
Felix Hlatky (Executive Director at Mastodon and Board Director at Mastodon, Inc.)
Felix Stalder (Professor at the Zurich University of the Arts)

Keynote: Beyond Openness

Abstract:

AI poses an existential threat to the digital commons by aggressively extracting its resources without reciprocity, by flooding it with low-quality content that increases moderation work, and by undermining the social model of knowledge creation as a transparent, collaborative effort. It’s almost a tragedy of the commons, all over again. Yet, we need to draw the right conclusions from this. Rather than abandoning, we need to defend the digital commons and open knowledge generation more generally as a social space more robustly. The first step is to move beyond the closed/open distinction. The question we need to ask is, Open for whom?