Infrastructures of Resilience: Berlin Forum | Funding the Commons

[Music] If we want to move away from big tech, we need more than regulation, we need alternative tech for that. [Music] There is this kind of coordination and people can build different pieces that when put together actually are able to tackle these massive kind of problems. And that's I think what is maybe like a little bit of a secret power of web 3. and something that I think beyond the technological improvements is sometimes underestimated. [Music] [Applause] We talk about financial coordination networks and funding the commons would be the coordination component of that network being able to bring people together into a shared space.

There's this ability to connect and facilitate conversations that otherwise are difficult to happen, right? Whether it's because physical distinctiveness, maybe there's like this competition, cooperation, dynamic playing, and reminding us that really what we're doing is funding the commons, not just with capital, but human resources, time, passion. We don't have the same interests or the same responsibilities as some of the other organizations in web 3, for example. And that gives us a kind of perspective and ability to bring players together in order to have conversations that can move us forward as a space as a whole. I think for us um within the UN system, the concept of digital public goods and the concept of commons is one that is like at the principal level really aligned with how the UN system works, how our partners work.

At the practical level, we don't always see that there's necessarily the understanding or the commitment to be really consistent with that approach. And so we are always really excited and energized when we come across organizations such as funding the commons who share that underlying principle and are so closely aligned in our approach. So I think the model that funding the commons implements which is we create these emergent popup innovation sessions across the world where we bridge geographical boundaries. We bring founders closer to the problems that they're trying to solve and confront them with that reality. I pitching a lot to the digital disobedience.

I think we need to bring people to this uh mindset that every moment that you're doing a little bit of digital disobedience, you invest in one in the resistance but also in the future. [Music]