Self-Infrastructuring
= the ability of an organization to collectively design, own, govern, and maintain its own infrastructure [1]
Description
BlockScience:
"We define self-infrastructuring6 as the ability of an organization to collectively design, own, govern, and maintain its own infrastructure. This concept underscores the significance of entities provisioning and operating their digital infrastructure, which is especially pivotal for entities whose ideals and objectives markedly diverge from those of external infrastructure providers. Due to the economics of scale, private digital infrastructure providers disproportionately serve majoritarian interests. Self-infrastructuring is a crucial method in prefigurative politics, enabling unparalleled freedoms in expressing unique values and goals – and therefore operates as a mechanism for expanding the field of political possibility, as it renders a wider range of positions susceptible to representation. These benefits, however, bring a host of distinct operational and governance challenges along with them."
(https://blog.block.science/knowledge-networks-and-the-politics-of-protocols/)
More information
- “How Design is Governance”, Amber Case, 2023. https://uxdesign.cc/how-design-is-governance-7c8dd466d753
- “Decentralised Technologies: ‘Self-Infrastructuring’ Resilience”, Kelsie Nabben, 2023. https://www.admscentre.org.au/kelsie-nabben/
- “How to Infrastructure”, Susan Leigh Star & Geoffrey C. Bowker, 2010. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446211304.n13.
- “Web3 as ‘self-infrastructuring’: The challenge is how.” Kelsie Nabben, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231159002