What is the rights operating system?

Just as phone apps run only on top of an operating system, democracy runs only on a foundation of rights. Now that we spend so much of our lives online, the book *Plurality* argues, that foundation should be rebuilt as shared digital protocols.

The apps on a smartphone run on top of an operating system (OS) such as iOS or Android. The OS sets the range of what is possible, and apps work within it. The book ⿻ Plurality sees rights as the OS of democracy. And now that much of life has moved online, it argues, that OS must also be rebuilt in digital form.

In short

The rights operating system is a comparison between the rights that democracy runs on and a computer's OS. It is the idea of chapter 4-0 of the book, "Rights, Operating Systems and ⿻ Freedom" ("rights operating system" is this site's short name for it, not a term from the book).

According to the book, now that people spend so much of their lives online, that foundation has become the internet's protocols (the agreed rules of communication) themselves. In the book's words, "The protocols that connect us thus define our rights in the digital age, forming the OS on which societies run." So the book's idea is to rebuild rights as shared digital protocols [1][2].

For example

Missing foundations. The book points out that, at the time of writing, there are no "widely adopted, non-proprietary" protocols for things like these [3]:

showing who you are online (identity)
forming groups and communicating
paying for real-world goods
securely sharing computing power and data

According to the book, many of these services are controlled by national governments or, more often, by a handful of private companies [3].

First shoots. On the other hand, the book names national digital infrastructure such as the "India stack", a data-sharing framework in Europe, the decentralized web, and new digital currencies and payment systems. Underfunded and fragmented though they are, the book sees them as "a proof of concept that a more systematic pursuit of ⿻ is feasible" [4].

How free speech is changing. When information was scarce, not being censored was at the heart of free speech. But now that information is abundant and attention is scarce, it is often easier to silence inconvenient voices by flooding the information space with distractions and spam than by censoring them. The book makes this point with research on posts fabricated by the Chinese government. So the book suspects that protections around free speech will need to evolve accordingly [5].

In more detail

How rights and an OS are alike

According to the book, rights and an OS have these traits in common [6]:

Both are foundations that set the range of what can be done by what runs on top of them (democracy, or apps).
Both need special protection so they are not undermined.
Both are often at least partly aspirational, and carry tensions within them.
Both are backed by strong enforcement (such as law enforcement) and also by a widely shared culture.

The book also says that rights do not belong to states alone. Institutions of many scales, such as courts, corporations and civil society groups, uphold rights, and "no one institution on their own is the 'enforcer' or 'source' of rights" [7].

Why democracy needs rights

Drawing on the political philosopher Danielle Allen, the book explains: if people cannot express their will safely and freely, government cannot respond to it. If they cannot associate freely, they cannot coordinate to contest those in power. "Without rights, elections become shams" [7].

Two features of ⿻ rights

The first is dynamism. Those who frame the foundations cannot foresee how they will be used, abused and reimagined. Just as an OS keeps being updated, rights should evolve, the book writes. It also stresses, though, that "dynamism is not desirable for its own sake" [5].

The second is relationships. In the book's words, "A ⿻ understanding of rights recognizes systems and groups as much as people." Examples include freedom of association and religion, and rights to collective bargaining. Rights are also defined by an overlapping network of cultures, institutions and people [8].

Society drawn as overlapping groups

The book pictures society as a diagram (a hypergraph) in which people are dots and groups are blobs around the dots. A person sits in several blobs at once. The shade of a blob shows the strength of the relationship, the digital assets inside a blob are the basis of the group's collaboration, and arrows coming into the diagram stand for points of access to the digital world [1].

The elements of this diagram correspond to the five chapters that follow in Part 4 of the book: identity and personhood, association, commercial trust, property and contract, and access [1].

What is debated

The book sets its view of rights against two others [9]:

Libertarianism. It treats rights as fixed, belonging to separate individuals, and centered on private property.
Technocracy. It regards rights as mere obstacles in the way of maximizing the welfare of society as a whole.

The book presents both as expressions of "monistic" perspectives on politics and technology. Against both, it holds that rights keep changing and exist within relationships between individuals and groups [9].

Where it fits in Plurality

The rights operating system is the idea of the opening chapter (4-0) of Part 4 of the book, "Freedom". The book's summary introduces Part 4 as picking up where the builders of the internet left off, "building the core open protocols that constitute human rights in a digital open society around identity, association, commerce, contract, and access" [2].

The chapters that follow are covered in these articles:

Identity and Personhood (chapter 4-1): how to show online who you are. See also proof of personhood
⿻ publics (chapter 4-2): how to protect the spaces where people gather and talk

The tools for collaboration covered in Part 5 of the book (collaborative technology) are placed on top of this foundation.

Sources

Plurality, 4-0, section "⿻ freedom", paragraphs 1–2 — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, chapter summaries, "Part 4: Freedom" — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/blob/86158859464aee75633acd854c656928121a7fd8/contents/english/8-blurb.md ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "⿻ freedom", paragraph 3 — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "⿻ freedom", paragraph 4 — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "Dynamism" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "⿻ foundations" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "Rights as foundation of democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "Rights and relationships" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-0, section "Contrast with Libertarianism and Technocracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-0/eng/ ［CC0］

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