I am the Founder of 3 things: RxC, PTC and Plurality Institute
RxC
RadicalxChange (RxC) Is a global movement for next-generation political economies
Founded in 2018, the RadicalxChange Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to advancing the RxC movement, to building community, and to education about democratic innovation. The RxC movement develops and experiments with radical social technologies, including new ways to manage property, vote, deliberate, protect community privacy and data sovereignty and exchange value. RxC connects people from all walks of life – ranging from social scientists and technologists to artists and activists.
PTC
Plural Technology Collaboratory
Generative foundation models (GFMs) like ChatGPT are disrupting most existing economic, verification and governance systems. To harness these systems for distributed empowerment and avoid the dangers they might otherwise create, Microsoft Research has launched a special project in collaboration with academic institutions like Berkeley, Harvard and MIT and private sector partners including EY and Protocol Labs. We harness cryptographic, sociological and political economic innovations to build systems that are resilient in the face of technological advance, socially and environmentally sustainable and promote social plurality.
PI
Plurality Institute
The Plurality Institute convenes researchers and practitioners from a range of fields including computer science, political ethics, sociology, and government, who are experimenting with plural technologies. We hope operate like a professional association for the emerging field of Plurality, technology for cooperative diversity and democracy
Thought Leadership
Generative AI
Welcome the shapeshifters. Using the digital traces you left behind, “generative foundation models” (GFMs) can now replicate your likeness, voice and personality, fooling your bank, work and even family. At the same time, you can harness a “stunt double” to increase your productivity by a factor of 100. Can we secure the opportunities these technologies offer without destroying the social fabric or imposing authoritarian control?
As Founder of Microsoft Research’s Special Project the Plural Technology Collaboratory, the Plurality Institute, Harvard’s GETTING-Plurality Research Network and the RadicalxChange Foundation, I am on the front lines of answering these questions in collaboration with the leading AI labs (like OpenAI) and most advanced governments in the world (like Taiwan).
Decentralized Social Technology (DeSoc)
Decentralized Social Technologies (DSTs), including blockchains and the fediverse, have become increasingly prominent parts of digital life. Yet they have thus far failed at replicating many of the critical features of existing institutions.
To succeed in the transformation they could empower, DSTs will need to be designed to capture crucial features of effective social institutions, helping build and protect social context, supporting pluralistic governance and representing the intersectional nature of human identity.
Data Dignity
I am the leading expert on the economics of data and how collective bargaining over data value can create a dignified data economy that rewards ordinary citizen contributions through digital transformation.
My work has spanned incubations of related products at Microsoft and close collaboration with policymakers and legislators around the world to protect data rights.
urality and the Taiwan Model
Taiwan is the world’s most advanced digital democracy. Under the leadership of Digital Minister Audrey Tang, the fragile island nation has built a participatory democratic platform on which more than a quarter of the country’s citizens are monthly active users and harnessed it to build social consensus and action to tackle today’s most daunting problems, from digital disruption to Covid-19, better than any other nation in the world.
As the primary intellectual collaborator of Minister Tang, I have become the leading global voice articulating the ideas behind Taiwan’s model of digital Plurality.
Governance innovation
Existing democratic institutions were built largely for the challenges of the 18th and 19th century. With technology throwing up new challenges at an ever-increasing rate, only similarly rapid innovation in our governance systems can allow democracy to survive and humans to remain masters, rather than servants, of their tools.
I have become the leading voice developing and communicating such governance innovations and helping us imagine what a 21st century democracy might mean.
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Quadratic Voting & Funding
I co-invented revolutionary new systems for voting and funding projects that blend elements of free markets and democracy to achieve optimal provision of public goods based on standard economic models.
These systems are increasingly being used by governments, companies and even video games around the world to facilitate fairer and more legitimate collective decisions in a range of contexts. Glen continues to extend and improve these systems to incorporate an increasing range of social concerns and to apply to an increasingly broad range of settings.
Latest editions of books
Revolutionary Ideas On How To Achieve Fairness And Prosperity For All
Many blame today’s economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right?
Plurality
Technology and democracy are at odds because we have chosen to pursue directions for technology inimical to democracy. Taiwan’s experience shows a different path is possible: Plurality, a paradigm for technology that empowers and bridges social diversity. This book shows how we can build a plural future for technology.
