Sam Conniff Allende

once bright promise that ‘technology will save us’ has perhaps shifted to ‘technology will make a fortune from our data and then dodge its taxes and avoid responsibility for abuses of its platform’

If history tells us anything, it’s that pirate movements in response to unfair systems start kicking at the edges but often end up becoming mainstream ideas over time.

Defying great odds, famed for flying in the face of unfairness and ultimately encouraging the Establishment to adopt their alternative ideas is the pirate approach to fix an unfair enemy

Platform cooperativism is a growing international movement that builds a fairer future of work. It’s about social justice and the bottom line. Rooted in democratic ownership, co-op members, technologists, unionists and freelancers create a concrete near-future alternative to the extractive sharing economy

As history shows, pirates have a tendency for accurately predicting future trends, and the platform coop directory to me feels like a glimpse into that future.

A mutiny can be a beautiful thing

Don’t aim for big, aim for connected

We’re all set for faster, bolder, shorter adventures

Where once there was hierarchical structure, a long slow climb up the career ladder, a culture of internal competition combined with deference to remote leaders, bureaucracy and that’s-just-how-it-is attitudes, there will now be collaborative skills, responsive mechanisms and shared principles to live and die by. Put like that, the future sure sounds a lot like the true history of the Golden-Age of pirates.

Who is your navy, pirate?