Five Theses on the Gravity of Platforms

In 2023 and 2024, the PLATFORM group considered “the platform” on both conceptual and empirical registers. Platforms seem to assemble capabilities, users, and interests and thereby set new futures in motion. Platforms are architectures for action that enable and constrain social, cultural, economic, and political possibilities, and shape how we structure, represent, and experience the world. Platforms are socio-technical infrastructures that can coordinate, consolidate, extend, and empower the activities of individuals, communities, corporations, and other actors. The group explored the gravity of the platform across humanistic and social science perspectives, advancing five theses about they simultaneously attract and repulse social action.