Cybernetic Governance in a Coliving House

Abstract

We present a case study of Sage House, a 9-person coliving house run with the help of a novel computational toolkit called Chore Wheel. We introduce motivating themes of leadership, organizational resilience, and cybernetics, followed by design principles for what we call distributed digital institutions. This design philosophy frames the coliving house as a type of commons, and draws significant inspiration from the work of economist Elinor Ostrom. We then present specific mechanisms of the system, and an exploratory analysis of the data they produce. We conclude with some open questions concerning the risks and benefits of technologically-mediated social institutions.

Keywords: Economics, Cybernetics, Commons, Institutions, Housing