Grassroots: shaping the digital realm and through it – the world

The digital realm today concentrates power and wealth in the hands of the few, excluding most of humanity from equal participation.

The Grassroots architecture provides conceptual, mathematical, and technological foundations to rectify this, offering a realistic path towards an equitable digital society. In doing so it addresses challenges presented by the LSE President in his inauguration speech and later incorporated in the LSE Shaping the World campaign. The talk will review the state of the digital realm and the digital society vis-à-vis the LSE Shaping the World goals, identify the culprit as the domination of global platforms, and offer grassroots platforms for the same applications as a repair. Grassroots platforms exclude third-party control, manipulation, or rent extraction, honouring individual dignity and autonomy by design. The successful deployment of grassroots social networks, grassroots cryptocurrencies, grassroots sharing-economy cooperatives, and grassroots democratic governance could transform the digital realm and through it—society, economy, and politics.

Meet our speakers and chair

Ehud Shapiro is a scientist, entrepreneur, artist, and political activist who is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Visiting Professor at Maths and DSI at LSE. He made contributions to many scientific disciplines including machine learning, program debugging, programming languages, social networks, molecular computers, human cell lineage, and a grassroots architecture for the digital realm.

Andrew Lewis-Pye is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at LSE. His research interests are in blockchain, computability, algorithmic randomness, and network science. Prior to coming to LSE he was a Royal Society University research fellow at the University of Leeds, and a Marie-Curie fellow at the University of Siena.

More about this event

The Department of Mathematics, located within a world-class social science institution, aims to be a leading centre for mathematics in the social sciences. We have a stimulating and active research environment and offer a wide range of degree programmes and courses.

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