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The Promise of Technological Decentralization. A Brief Reconstruction

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Abstract

Internet and Digitalization have long been associated with the promise of a technology-enabled decentralization of social conditions. Although such expectations have regularly fallen short, this underlying generic vision has proven to be astonishingly stable. This article traces the origin of the notion of decentralizing socio-economic forms of coordination through technological means—from the do-it-yourself scene of the 1960s, the early computer counterculture, and debates on cyberspace and Web 2.0 to present day ideas of decentralized and distributed forms of production and economic systems.

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Acknowledgements

The research for this text was funded by the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung.

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  1. Institute of Social Sciences, Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, Universität Stuttgart, Seidenstr. 36, D–70174, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jan-Felix Schrape

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Correspondence to Jan-Felix Schrape.

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Schrape, JF. The Promise of Technological Decentralization. A Brief Reconstruction. Soc 56, 31–37 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-018-00321-w

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