Summary
The best opportunities for liberating social progress arise in times of technological transformation. Yet technologies that emerge from capitalist incentives too often fail to deliver on this promise. More often, they increase our capacity to pursue self-interest and externalize harm, exacerbating our deepest challenges rather than solving them.
So we need to look elsewhere – beyond capitalism and other conventional wisdom – to find real progress and deliver on technology’s true potential. We need better techniques for cooperating across difference: integrating our interests with others, making decisions together, and accepting the legitimacy of compromises.
RadicalxChange focuses on the details of how to do this, with particular attention to institutional innovation:
- Research: We support and contribute to rigorous research and development of novel decision-making and power-sharing systems, such as quadratic voting & funding, common ownership structures, plural currencies, social identity, and “listening-at-scale” citizen engagement techniques.
- Prototypes: We develop open-source technologies, such as our quadratic voting tool, RxC Voice, and PCOArt, that enable dynamic experimentation and illustrate promising new directions in institutional design.
- Partnerships: We work hand-in-hand with a wide variety of institutions, ranging from governments to arts institutions to data unions and web3 networks, to facilitate careful real-world implementations of boundary-pushing systems.
- Movement-Building: We educate the public and host events to weave surprising coalitions that can help grow the movement for plural innovation and democratic revitalization.
RadicalxChange Foundation is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to democratic innovation and institutional design through operational partnerships and experimental projects between academia, government, art, technology, and beyond.
RadicalxChange – 21/01/2025 (02:12:12)
On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, the Global Solutions Initiative (GSI), Sciences Po Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub, and RadicalxChange Foundation welcomed over 131 professionals from the public, private, and civic sectors to Berlin to discuss AI’s impact on the labor force in the coming years to imagine new policy strategies to help workers weather the risks. This is an official side event for the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris on Feb 10th and 11th.
Our aim is to take seriously the possible depth and breadth of AI systems’ disruptions to livelihoods, hone in on policies that would help, and bring them to the upcoming AI Action Summit and beyond. This includes the idea of a new market structure for AI training data (featuring trusted data intermediaries as “necessary counterparties” from which AI companies would need to negotiate rights to use large datasets). Other relevant ideas include new social insurance pools and new forms of capital ownership.
Many thanks to our speakers, organizing committee, partners, and participants.
===
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
RADICALXCHANGE: RadicalxChange Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to democratic innovation and institutional design through operational partnerships and experimental projects between academia, government, art, technology, and beyond.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS INITIATIVE: The Global Solutions Initiative proposes policy responses to major global problems, generated through a disciplined research program, elaborated in policy dialogues, and addressed by the G20, the G7 and other global governance fora.
TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS INNOVATION HUB AT SCIENCES PO: The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub’s core mission is to accelerate collaborative technology and governance to address global affairs challenges focused specifically on citizenship and tech, defence and security, and tech and prosperity.
CO-HOST
STIFTUNG MERCATOR: Stiftung Mercator is a private, independent, and non-profit foundation, committed to an open society based on solidarity and equal opportunities.
RadicalxChange – 16/05/2025 (01:01:10)
Today, in Part I of a two-episode conversation, Matt Prewitt is joined by civic entrepreneur and Founder of Project Liberty, Frank McCourt, who is on a mission to reclaim the internet and prioritize human rights in our digital landscape. Drawing parallels between the early public oversight of television and the current state of the internet, Frank highlights the commodification of our data and identities online. He advocates for new protocols and a movement inspired by historical fights against oppression to secure genuine data rights and agency online. As we look to the future, Project Liberty’s endeavors may play a crucial role. This interview is a fantastic opportunity to hear more about Frank’s thinking.
Bios:
Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is a civic entrepreneur and the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future through its work across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Frank is proud to extend his family’s 130-year legacy of merging community and social impact with financial results, an approach that started when the original McCourt Company was launched in Boston in 1893.
He is a passionate supporter of multiple academic, civic, and cultural institutions and initiatives. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data. The project includes the development of a groundbreaking, open-source internet protocol called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will be owned by the public to serve as a new web infrastructure. It also includes the creation of Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute,) launched with founding partners Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Sciences Po in Paris, to advance research, bring together technologists and social scientists, and develop a governance model for the internet’s next era.
Frank has served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for many years and, in 2013, made a $100 million founding investment to create Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He expanded on this in 2021 with a $100 million investment to catalyze an inclusive pipeline of public policy leaders and put the school on a path to becoming tuition-free.
In 2024, Frank released his first book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.
Frank’s Social Links:
RadicalxChange – 16/05/2025 (01:16:00)
In this episode, Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt joins Matt for a second round to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by rapidly developing AI technologies. Building on their previous chat about digital infrastructure, they explore whether AI will exacerbate social media, digital advertising, and data centralization issues, or fundamentally change them. McCourt emphasizes fixing the internet’s design flaws to ensure AI benefits society, advocates for returning data ownership to individuals and stresses the need for political engagement to align AI with democratic values. Tune in for this enlightening conversation and what we can do moving forward.
Links & References:
- RadicalxChange(s) | Frank McCourt: Founder of Project Liberty (Part I) on Reclaiming the Internet
- Khmer Empire | Wikipedia
- The Decline of the Khmer Empire | National Library of Australia
- Restrictions on TikTok in the United States | Wikipedia
- TikTok sues to block prospective US app ban | CNN Business
- How Silicon Valley gamed the world’s toughest privacy rules – POLITICO
- European Union fines Meta $1.3 billion for violating privacy laws : NPR
- The Dangers of the Global Spread of China’s Digital Authoritarianism | Center for a New American Security
- China’s Techno-Authoritarianism Has Gone Global | Human Rights Watch
- China trying to develop world ‘built on censorship and surveillance’ | Privacy News | Al Jazeera
- Project Liberty
- People’s Bid For TikTok – Project Liberty
Bios:
Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is a civic entrepreneur and the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future through its work across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Frank is proud to extend his family’s 130-year legacy of merging community and social impact with financial results, an approach that started when the original McCourt Company was launched in Boston in 1893.
He is a passionate supporter of multiple academic, civic, and cultural institutions and initiatives. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data.
The project includes the development of a groundbreaking, open-source internet protocol called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will be owned by the public to serve as a new web infrastructure. It also includes the creation of Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute,) launched with founding partners Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Sciences Po in Paris, to advance research, bring together technologists and social scientists, and develop a governance model for the internet’s next era.
Frank has served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for many years and, in 2013, made a $100 million founding investment to create Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He expanded on this in 2021 with a $100 million investment to catalyze an inclusive pipeline of public policy leaders and put the school on a path to becoming tuition-free.
In 2024, Frank released his first book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.
Frank’s Social Links:
OnAir Post: RadicalxChange
News
Wolfgang Streeck believes that the future of democracy lies not in newfangled structures of planetary governance, but in a recuperation of the nation state’s lost capacities. In Taking Back Control?, published by Verso last year, the German sociologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute methodically traces the quiet transfer of authority over economic life from elected parliaments to technocratic institutions beyond democratic reach. Streeck’s project warrants attention as a distinctly non-right-wing flavor of protectionism that cuts through the priors of the American political landscape.
From the inflation crisis of the 1970s onwards, Streeck argues, national governments have ceded ever-larger swaths of policy to an extraterritorial network of treaties, courts, and market watchdogs. The neoliberal turn, in his telling, did not emancipate markets from the state; it re-cast the state—above all the United States—as the enforcer of a single, border-spanning market regime. The promise of friction-free trade rests on an imposed economic uniformity that ultimately strips democracies of their sensitivity to citizens’ “collective particularism.” This enforced uniformity, Streeck shows, generates the discontent that authoritarian movements in turn exploit.
Streeck’s history helps us think about the origins of reactionary disquiet without conceding to its rhetoric. It also helps us think about the necessary conditions for an alternative populism. Drawing on thinkers including Karl Polanyi, John Maynard Keynes, and Herbert Simon, Streeck argues that the complexity of the global economy can only be democratically addressed by the downward delegation of sovereign powers. Against both planetary technocracy and reactionary nationalism, Streeck envisions an international order of small, democratically empowered states capable of shaping economic outcomes in response to the public good.
Combinations’ Matt Prewitt and Guy Mackinnon-Little spoke with Streeck about the sources of state authority, the complexity gap between networks and human societies, and what an international system that bolsters rather than undermines sovereignty might look like.
In this episode, Matt Prewitt sits down with Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Cyber Ambassador-at-large and 1st Digital Minister, as well as the star of the new short documentary Good Enough Ancestor. It is a fascinating conversation exploring the profound intersections of technology, spirituality, and democracy.
In today’s episode, renowned academic and legal scholar Professor Joseph H.H. Weiler speaks with Matt about The Trial of Jesus – connecting the historical event as a lens for understanding justice, religious pluralism, and democracy. The examination leads us through the limits of state neutrality in matters of faith, the balance between freedom of and from religion, and the evolving role of digital platforms. Professor Weiler shares perspectives from his extensive legal scholarship while reflecting on the intersection of theology, democracy, and technological change in our modern world. An incredibly poignant episode that is a must-listen.
Note: This episode was recorded in Dec 2024.
On Jan 15, 2025 at Stiftung Mercator in Berlin, RadicalxChange Foundation, along with partners Global Solutions Initiative and Sciences Po Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub, co-hosted a side event to the Paris AI Action Summit. We focused on the future of collective bargaining in the context of the AI revolution. The discussions helped to advance our thinking in several important ways. Here are some quick initial reflections.
History suggests that following significant technological breakthroughs, individuals and communities often endure temporary but harmful losses of economic bargaining power. (For example, real living standards declined in industrializing countries between the mid-18th and the early-to-mid 19th centuries, in part because individuals’ contributions to vital productive processes became more interchangeable and therefore lacked bargaining power.) On a longer arc of history, new technology’s benefits usually accrue to whole societies, but such short-term social disruptions partly offset those benefits and frequently destabilize societies. It is therefore important to strategize toward achieving social equilibrium quickly, robustly, and without undermining the processes of technological development.
Power rebalancing after technological breakthroughs occurs through at least three pathways: technological, political, and social. Technological rebalancing occurs when the dissemination or cheapening of the relevant technology undermines the advantage of the technology’s owners (as in the personal computer and software revolutions). Political rebalancing occurs when direct state interventions check the rights of businesses to exploit the new technology (as in the 18th century, when speech controls and intellectual property statutes limited the power of printing press owners). Social rebalancing occurs when social or labor organizations form a collective counterpower, achieving an economic foothold vis-a-vis the technology’s owners (as in the late part of the industrial revolution). These pathways are not mutually exclusive, possess unique benefits and drawbacks, and are more or less suitable in different societal and technological situations.
What might these modes of rebalancing look like in the nascent AI revolution? Which are likeliest to mitigate losses of bargaining power and/or uphold the integrity of individuals and communities? We will first define, then critique and evaluate three pathways.
About
Chapters
RadicalxChange chapters are the key organizations of the RxC community. Our chapters around the world develop local hubs for discussions, investigations, and implementations of the next-generation political economies that our community envisions.
Chapters warmly welcome people of all backgrounds and levels of experience. We’re committed to tolerance, respect, and open discussion.
Source: RadicalxChange Website
Foundation
The RadicalxChange Foundation strives to empower people and organizations in the global RxC movement to grow their ideas and initiatives. Feel free to contact us for any RxC related matters, including consultancy work related to democratic innovation or institutional design.
Source: RadicalxChange Website
Contact
Web Links
Videos
New Solidarity for an AI-Disrupted Economy | Berlin 2025
January 21, 2025 (02:12:12)
By: RadicalxChange
On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, the Global Solutions Initiative (GSI), Sciences Po Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub, and RadicalxChange Foundation welcomed over 131 professionals from the public, private, and civic sectors to Berlin to discuss AI’s impact on the labor force in the coming years to imagine new policy strategies to help workers weather the risks. This is an official side event for the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris on Feb 10th and 11th.
Our aim is to take seriously the possible depth and breadth of AI systems’ disruptions to livelihoods, hone in on policies that would help, and bring them to the upcoming AI Action Summit and beyond. This includes the idea of a new market structure for AI training data (featuring trusted data intermediaries as “necessary counterparties” from which AI companies would need to negotiate rights to use large datasets). Other relevant ideas include new social insurance pools and new forms of capital ownership.
Many thanks to our speakers, organizing committee, partners, and participants.
===
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
RADICALXCHANGE: RadicalxChange Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to democratic innovation and institutional design through operational partnerships and experimental projects between academia, government, art, technology, and beyond.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS INITIATIVE: The Global Solutions Initiative proposes policy responses to major global problems, generated through a disciplined research program, elaborated in policy dialogues, and addressed by the G20, the G7 and other global governance fora.
TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS INNOVATION HUB AT SCIENCES PO: The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub’s core mission is to accelerate collaborative technology and governance to address global affairs challenges focused specifically on citizenship and tech, defence and security, and tech and prosperity.
CO-HOST
STIFTUNG MERCATOR: Stiftung Mercator is a private, independent, and non-profit foundation, committed to an open society based on solidarity and equal opportunities.
Frank McCourt: Founder of Project Liberty (Part I)
May 16, 2025 (01:01:10)
By: RadicalxChange
Today, in Part I of a two-episode conversation, Matt Prewitt is joined by civic entrepreneur and Founder of Project Liberty, Frank McCourt, who is on a mission to reclaim the internet and prioritize human rights in our digital landscape. Drawing parallels between the early public oversight of television and the current state of the internet, Frank highlights the commodification of our data and identities online. He advocates for new protocols and a movement inspired by historical fights against oppression to secure genuine data rights and agency online. As we look to the future, Project Liberty’s endeavors may play a crucial role. This interview is a fantastic opportunity to hear more about Frank’s thinking.
Bios:
Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is a civic entrepreneur and the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future through its work across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Frank is proud to extend his family’s 130-year legacy of merging community and social impact with financial results, an approach that started when the original McCourt Company was launched in Boston in 1893.
He is a passionate supporter of multiple academic, civic, and cultural institutions and initiatives. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data. The project includes the development of a groundbreaking, open-source internet protocol called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will be owned by the public to serve as a new web infrastructure. It also includes the creation of Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute,) launched with founding partners Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Sciences Po in Paris, to advance research, bring together technologists and social scientists, and develop a governance model for the internet’s next era.
Frank has served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for many years and, in 2013, made a $100 million founding investment to create Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He expanded on this in 2021 with a $100 million investment to catalyze an inclusive pipeline of public policy leaders and put the school on a path to becoming tuition-free.
In 2024, Frank released his first book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.
Frank’s Social Links:
- Project Liberty
- X- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
- Instagram- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
- X-McCourt Institute (@McCourtInst)
Frank McCourt: Founder of Project Liberty (Part II)
May 16, 2025 (01:16:00)
By: RadicalxChange
In this episode, Project Liberty Founder Frank McCourt joins Matt for a second round to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by rapidly developing AI technologies. Building on their previous chat about digital infrastructure, they explore whether AI will exacerbate social media, digital advertising, and data centralization issues, or fundamentally change them. McCourt emphasizes fixing the internet’s design flaws to ensure AI benefits society, advocates for returning data ownership to individuals and stresses the need for political engagement to align AI with democratic values. Tune in for this enlightening conversation and what we can do moving forward.
Links & References:
- RadicalxChange(s) | Frank McCourt: Founder of Project Liberty (Part I) on Reclaiming the Internet
- Khmer Empire | Wikipedia
- The Decline of the Khmer Empire | National Library of Australia
- Restrictions on TikTok in the United States | Wikipedia
- TikTok sues to block prospective US app ban | CNN Business
- How Silicon Valley gamed the world’s toughest privacy rules – POLITICO
- European Union fines Meta $1.3 billion for violating privacy laws : NPR
- The Dangers of the Global Spread of China’s Digital Authoritarianism | Center for a New American Security
- China’s Techno-Authoritarianism Has Gone Global | Human Rights Watch
- China trying to develop world ‘built on censorship and surveillance’ | Privacy News | Al Jazeera
- Project Liberty
- People’s Bid For TikTok – Project Liberty
Bios:
Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is a civic entrepreneur and the executive chairman and former CEO of McCourt Global, a private family company committed to building a better future through its work across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries, as well as its significant philanthropic activities. Frank is proud to extend his family’s 130-year legacy of merging community and social impact with financial results, an approach that started when the original McCourt Company was launched in Boston in 1893.
He is a passionate supporter of multiple academic, civic, and cultural institutions and initiatives. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching, $500 million initiative to transform the internet through a new, equitable technology infrastructure and rebuild social media in a way that enables users to own and control their personal data.
The project includes the development of a groundbreaking, open-source internet protocol called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP), which will be owned by the public to serve as a new web infrastructure. It also includes the creation of Project Liberty’s Institute (formerly The McCourt Institute,) launched with founding partners Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, and Sciences Po in Paris, to advance research, bring together technologists and social scientists, and develop a governance model for the internet’s next era.
Frank has served on Georgetown University’s Board of Directors for many years and, in 2013, made a $100 million founding investment to create Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He expanded on this in 2021 with a $100 million investment to catalyze an inclusive pipeline of public policy leaders and put the school on a path to becoming tuition-free.
In 2024, Frank released his first book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.
Frank’s Social Links:
- Project Liberty
- X- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
- Instagram- Project Liberty (@pro_jectliberty)
- X-McCourt Institute (@McCourtInst)
Board and Team
Board Members
- E. Glen Weyl
- Vitalik Buterin
- Audrey Tang (onAir Post)
- Christopher Kulendran Thomas
- Anne-Marie Slaughter
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Team Members
- Matt Prewitt, President
- Alex Randaccio, Technical Director
- Jack Henderson, Acting COO
- Paula Berman, Chief Operating Officer
- Malik Lakoubay, Director of Policy & Outreach
