Democratisation is a lovely word. It sounds nice. A bit of a mouthful true, but fresh and crunchy like its close cousins open source and open knowledge. Certainly nicer than terms like extractive, exploitative, or capitalist.
So making technology more widely accessible (as per the Wikipedia definition of technology democratisation) can’t be anything but a good thing.
A fantastic example that people in the industry love to point to is of course Wikipedia. A globally available, increasingly multilingual, repository of all kinds of knowledge, maintained by a self-organising group of volunteers and administrators. It is a fantastic example of how collaboration, community, and knowledge can be scaled by technology for global positive impact. In particular to communities and individuals who wouldn’t otherwise afford or have easy access to other sources of education.
One of the first big tech companies to recognise this power is probably Google whose stated core mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This kind of statement imbues a company’s image with a social purpose, useful both in public perception and in attracting top talent.
Dozens of other examples quickly come to mind. WordPress democratises publishing, WooCommerce and Shopify democratise commerce, Uber democratises mobility, YouTube democratises television, eBay and PayPal democratise trading, and Facebook democratises advertising. OpenAI democratises intelligence. Robinhood democratises finance and Airtable democratises data collection and storage. Adobe democratises creativity.
But, there’s a but.
Beneath the progressive veneer of such statements lies a deep contradiction. Democratisation — achieved in technology primarily through affordability — suggests that innovations are inherently egalitarian, empowering, and socially beneficial. But while many technologies are more widely available than ever before, their means of production and the value extracted from them are anything but. Primarily because the structures that govern them remain tightly concentrated in the hands of a few powerful actors, giving the illusion of freedom while wealth and influence consolidate at the top.
This is the fundamental difference between most technology companies and their poster child Wikipedia: governance.
Wikipedia is governed and run by a not-for-profit organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation, which is in turn funded through a mixture of donations and grants. This ensures that its mission is neither compromised nor subservient to a competing motive.
The same cannot be said of the examples listed above, and a raft of other companies claiming to similarly do some social good through “democratising” something.
The starkest example is probably Google, who’s motto “Don’t be evil” was quietly retired some years ago. One of the original intentions stated behind the motto’s creation was that it was:
“…a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.” — Paul Buchheit on Gmail, AdSense and More
What are we to assume then from the removal of the phrase’s use? It is not unreasonable to think that suddenly, exploiting its users became something desirable. And certainly, while Google has carried on organising the world’s information and making it accessible, it is also undeniable that the company has built a massive surveillance infrastructure that extracts behavioural data from billions of users to feed a hyper-targeted advertising engine. Users may still largely freely access its tools but the value created flows overwhelmingly to Google, not the communities and individuals whose data fuels its algorithms. And neither to its paying advertisers. Additionally, we have no insight or input into what Google deems to be “useful information”, allowing a privately owned corporation to dictate what of the world’s information is worth having easy access to.
Nowadays this is exacerbated by Google’s AI models appropriating knowledge without credit or compensation. A story paralleled by that of OpenAI who started life as a non-profit organisation but is quickly pivoting to becoming a for-profit one (#) putting into question how well it can adhere to its mission of “developing artificial intelligence for the good of humanity”. As a for-profit organisation the company will no longer be controlled by a non-profit board leaving the decision of what is considered to be “good for humanity” down to, well, Uncle Sam.
Uber similarly cloaks itself in democratic rhetoric, claiming to “democratise” mobility and job opportunities. Yet drivers, who perform the core labor, have no say in how the platform is run, no transparency or influence on pricing, and few protections. Meanwhile, Uber operates at a global scale with centralised control and questionable practices, profiting from — and creating! — precarious work.
So what’s presented as democratisation is very often nothing more than a modern form of enclosure, offloading risk and exploitation onto users while creating platform dependency and the erosion of alternatives.
What about open source then?
Take WordPress and its subsidiary WooCommerce, for example. Both are open-source platforms that proclaim to “democratise” publishing and commerce. It is indeed true that the source code for both are freely available and it is also undeniably true that it is (comparatively) close to trivial nowadays to use such tools to create a website or online store. Automattic, the company behind both, relies heavily on the notion that through open source it is democratising publishing and commerce for both its public image, marketing, and hiring.
But when we look at where value flows it is once again undeniably upwards, with Automattic valued at upwards of $7 Billion as a result of maintaining complete and dictatorial control over the entire ecosystem. Control largely held in one person’s hands.
While the concentration of such wealth and power is in itself questionable, what is truly problematic is that the “open source” nature of such products is that the owners benefit from tens of thousands of free labour hours contributed by volunteers who don’t usually fairly share in the value they help generate.
With shady, unclear, or totalitarian governance organisations such as these are free to set and pursue agendas different to their stated “missions” while still massively benefiting from the unpaid labour and exposure derived the public perception of such missions.
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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash