Opaque and diaphanous epistemologies
Organizations that produce, support and recreate them in platform economies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24215/23143738e118Keywords:
platform economy, digital platforms, epistemic opacity, epistemic sharpnessAbstract
Technological changes in recent years have allowed the emergence, consolidation and -in some cases- dominance of platform businesses. The growth of this type of companies has been very fast since the mid-nineties, fostered by technological transformations and digital connection. However, not all uses of internet platforms are performed by companies, nor all companies have a capitalist organization. There are social-in-solidarity digital developments and platforms, based on open source, shared space, non-profit exchange, and a permanent work of socializing of what is being generated as knowledge.
In this paper, we first present a literature review of the field we call Platform Economy, to position the concept of epistemic opacity and explain the power of domination built by this mode. We will discuss the differences between two positions. One, which we call commercial platforms for profit with epistemic opacity and social domination, and another, which we call epistemic transparency as they are free and open access public spaces to produce and share the capital stock jointly and severally.
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