Premise
- Innovation often happens at the edges: community networks, platform co-ops, federated services.
- These models promise pluralism but can drift into soft planning if governance ossifies.
Systems view
- Edge experiments generate diverse signals; interoperability lets successes spread without decree.
- Governance design (exit rights, forkability, transparent rules) keeps feedback honest.
Social and political stakes
- Who gets autonomy and who remains dependent on centralized stacks.
- How local control can protect culture and context—or become parochial gatekeeping.
Case directions
- Cooperative clouds, local mesh networks, federated social media, community finance.
- Map where they honor preference diversity vs. where they collapse into new hierarchies.
Expansion notes
- Keep beginner framing: explain federation and co-ops plainly, with concrete examples and trade-offs.