Nandini Chami

Hi, my name is Nandini, and I’m the Deputy Director and a Fellow at IT4Change, based in Bangalore. Our organization focuses on the intersection of technology and social change, particularly advocating for gender equality and development justice. We are honored to have co-organized the Roots of Resilience Conference in Trivandrum alongside the Platform Cooperativism Consortium and K-DISC. This conference highlights the importance of cooperative principles within the digital economy, a cause we deeply support at IT4Change.

Why is it crucial to consider cooperativism in digital development? Firstly, the big tech economy’s centralizing logic, driven by capital rather than the membership-based contributions of workers, needs reevaluation. Platform cooperativism advocates for returning ownership of production means to the workers themselves, disrupting traditional big-tech dynamics. Secondly, we must also consider the feminist traditions of communication to envision a different kind of platform economy. We often question why AI development follows a corporate logic that plunders ecological and human resources. Instead, we propose a new AI paradigm, inspired by mycorrhizal networks where forest roots and fungi symbiotically interact, using data as social knowledge for the common good and social value. Thank you.