From Oligopolistiic Digital Platforms to Open/Cooperative ones ?

Based on a literature review, this paper explores the disruptive nature of digitalization and the oligopolistic digital platforms that embody it, as well as the promises and difficulties of emergent open cooperative platforms. Before analysing the main questions raised by those platforms, we first propose a brief analysis of the digitalization process as a socio-technical mutation, of its risks and opportunities through four prospective scenarios. We then build a typology of the oligopolistic platforms at the heart of the present phase of digitalization that cooperative/open platforms aim to supplant or at least to challenge. Could the combination of the new open source movement, with the principles developed for successful commons and those of the older cooperatives offer an alternative? The obstacles are huge, and the questions raised much more abundant than the answers brought by theory and/or experimentation. The development of alternative platforms is thus questioning modes of: Distribution of the bundles of rights and governance; Centralization and decentralization; Autonomy and synergy; Choice of activities; Growth; Differentiation, standardization, convergence and hybridization; Localisation, globalisation and glocalization; Fair pricing; Organization of work, protection of workers and more largely citizen; Inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders; Funding; Relationship to the State and private or public entities ... among other, often combined, dimensions. Most importantly, alternative platform development also questions the capacity for cooperation of a highly socialized human nature.