Plans for the metaverse are threatening to move us out of market capitalism into a technofeudal order – liberal market governance is no longer a sufficient regulatory response.
News and Research articles on Interoperability
This work discusses the emerging concept of the metaverse from a lens of interoperability. By drawing on literature from the political economy of digital platforms, varieties of capitalism, and cybergovernance it proposes a framework based on openness and closure as well as security and economic interests to illustrate four models based on examples from the infrastructure layer comprising metaverse technologies.
The “exit penalty”: Why the DMA’s interoperability rules fail the reality test of platform migration
The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is designed to empower users with the ability to freely switch between digital platforms. However, my 2026 migration experiment from Apple’s iOS to Google’s Android in Japan reveals a stark contrast between legal provisions and practical realities.
This article critically interrogates the increasing importance of connectivity protocols for how they shape and prefigure dynamics of platform power, as dominant actors in the tech sector collaborate on the issue of smart home and Internet of Things interoperability in efforts to maintain their market power and demonstrate their ability to regulate themselves.
This glossary entry presents a topology of interoperability layers and presents some of the key economic and socio-technical concerns faced by interoperable systems.
Openness is contextual. Open implies access to resources or participatory mode of production that can be otherwise closed or restricted in degrees. Openness does not necessarily lead to inclusiveness or equity, even though it may be used to invoke such ideals.
This article presents a general analysis of how user autonomy in the internet cloud is increasingly put into jeopardy by the growing comfort and efficiency of the user-interface. Although this issue has not been, thus far, explicitly addressed by the law, it is a fundamental ethical question that should be carefully assessed to guide the future deployment of cloud computing.