Components

Depending on the context, the term Caretaker Tech is used in different ways. When it is necessary to analyze existing digital components, the term is used differently for applications and for the components that make them interoperable; the two are defined separately below.

An application counts as Caretaker Tech if it meets two conditions:

• Providing functions for an economy beyond market and state: The application itself — or a standalone part of it — provides functions that support an economy based on sharing and voluntary cooperation. Such functions are listed in this text, but the list isn’t meant to be complete.
• Aiming for integrability: The application itself — or a standalone part of it — is, or is prepared to be, integrated into an infrastructure with other applications of the same kind, so that users can act within economic structures that go beyond what the app itself offers.

Applications can be built to be Caretaker Tech. Digital components that provide interoperability become Caretaker Tech by being used by such applications:

• Providing interoperability: Any non-application digital component — such as a protocol, an ontology, or a background service — is Caretaker Tech when it is commonly used by corresponding applications to enable interoperability.

This conception is not about classifying individual applications or defining how they interoperate: it is about the economic infrastructure beyond market and state that will emerge through the use of those applications. In this conception — and in any text that looks at Caretaker Tech from a higher level — the term is used more broadly:

• If it is unnecessary to distinguish between its constituent components, the infrastructure itself is called Caretaker Tech. Therefore, when someone “interacts with Caretaker Tech” in general, they are using some application to access the infrastructure; the underlying digital components need not be specified further.