Platforms might be analyzed in many different ways, and another book might make a more thorough contribution to a very needed general theory of platforms than this one can. In order to discuss The Stack as a platform, however, it is necessary to identify some typological characteristics that all platforms might share in common. These would characterize platforms in relation to other technologies (such as individual machines, executable programs, fixed infrastructure, legal mechanisms, or social norms) and in relation to other institutions (such as states, bureaucracies, and corporations). I list here seventeen criteria and qualities of platforms (a nice prime number). The list is by no means final or exhaustive, but taken as a whole, the shape and function of platforms as both technical and political-economic forms are more clearly specified, especially in relation to The Stack. Some of the criteria listed look like basic principles of secondorder cybernetics, others of software application design, and others of any networkssavvy political science. As such, “ platform theory ” is probably less about inventing new attributes from scratch than it is about observing that recognizable common practices already do constitute platforms as an institutional and technical norm at the scale of states and markets:
- As opposed to other macrogovernance institutions, platforms do not work according to detailed premeditated master plans; rather they set the stage for actions to unfold through ordered emergence. Bureaucracies, by contrast, are systems that are also dependent on strict protocols and interfaces, but they operate by premodeling desired outcomes and then working backward to codify interactions that would guarantee these: means are a function of ends. Platforms begin by fixing equally strict means but are strategically agnostic as to outcomes: ends are a function of means.
- Platforms are based on a rigorous standardization of the scale, duration, and morphology of their essential components. The simplicity and rigidity of these standards make platforms predictable for their Users, but also allow them to support idiosyncratic uses that platform designers could never predict. The formal politics of platforms is characterized by this apparent paradox between a strict and invariable mechanism (autocracy of means) providing for an emergent heterogeneity of self-directed uses (liberty of ends). The emergent politics of any one platform may largely be a function of how it strategizes the relationship between standards calibration and the perceived self-interests of its stakeholders.
- This standardization of essential components produces an effect of generative entrenchment by which one platform ’ s early consolidation of systems (formats, protocols, and interfaces) decreases a User’ s opportunity costs to invest more and more transactions into that particular platform, while it increases the costs to translate earlier investments into another platform ’ s (at least partially) incompatible systems. <sup>9</sup> The ongoing consolidation of systems and reduction of transaction costs leverages that advantage toward increasing the robustness of that platform ’ s unique requirements.
Platform and Stack, Model and Machine
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