Digital Capitalism

In this paper, I explore the concept of multitude according to the writings of Toni Negri, Michael Hardt and Paolo Virno and in opposition to the concept of mass, developed by the French thinker Gustave Le Bon.
Multitude appears as a kind of political subject, which is based on plurality, difference and cooperation. In addition, I claim that, though multitude effectively contributed to modify the current politics in
many countries, it has been more significant in the field of economics. The multitude has become a productive agent in the context of the cognitive capitalism (and what we have called the capitalism of the commons) that is more convenient for the economical goals than the mass. In this space we can see the emergence of a depoliticised face of the multitude.

Un mayor desarrollo de esta cuestión puede ser leído aquí:

https://www.academia.edu/22660452/Senderos_nuevos_del_capital_trabajo_consumo_y_producci%C3%B3n_de_subjetividad_2016_

La discusión sobre la explotación económica de las tecnologías de la información suele
concentrarse en las nociones de ubicuidad e inmaterialidad. Sin embargo, su significativa demanda de recursos físicos locales transforma los sitios donde se emplaza, y pesa sobre la configuración social del espacio. Este artículo pretende caracterizar los centros de producción de la economía digital, e interpretar el efecto que producen sobre
la organización del territorio a nivel local, regional y global


The physical trace of the digital economy and its impact on territorial organization

Discussion on the economic exploitation of information technologies usually focuses
on notions of ubiquity and immateriality. Nevertheless, its significant demand for local physical resources transforms the sites where it’s located, and weighs over the social
configuration of space. This article attempts to characterize the production centers of the digital economy, and gauge their effect on territorial organization at the local, regional and global scale.

TESI DI LAUREA TRIENNALE - SCIENZE POLITICHE E RELAZIONI INTERNAZIONALI

Nel corso dell’ultimo ventennio, con varie modalità in relazione ai differenti contesti esistenti, è possibile rintracciare un processo globale di spostamento o riproduzione nello spazio digitale di molteplici aspetti legati all’articolazione della democrazia rappresentativa. Al contempo, il processo di atomizzazione ed individualizzazione iniziato con l’avvento del neoliberismo negli ultimi decenni del secolo scorso, trova oggi nella dimensione digitale un nuovo spazio di articolazione: nella società in rete, che fine fa l’individuo? In quale misura assume centralità proprio la figura dell’individuo-utente-consumatore isolato all’interno dei meccanismi di “partecipazione” politica? E quali possono essere delle strategie da praticare, dal punto di vista economico e giurisprudenziale, per democratizzare la rete?

Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere: the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field--where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.

Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. The book depicts a world becoming an inescapable series of less and less perfect games. This world gives rise to a new persona. In place of the subject or citizen stands the gamer. As all previous such personae had their breviaries and manuals, Gamer Theory seeks to offer guidance for thinking within this new character. Neither a strategy guide nor a cheat sheet for improving one's score or skills, the book is instead a primer in thinking about a world made over as a gamespace, recast as an imperfect copy of the game.

The digital labour debate has produced manifold insights into new forms of work emerging within digital capitalism. So far, though, most research has focused on highly precarious labourers, neglecting the growing ranks of affluent 'tech workers'. I argue that this analytical oversight can be attributed to a narrow con-ceptualisation of digital labour. Thus, this article first proposes a broadening of the digital labour concept to encompass all work entangled with the digital economy. In a second step, I demonstrate the heuristic surplus of this theoretical broadening through a discussion of the empirical literature on tech workers. By bringing tech workers into the debate, I point to the cultural, technological and organisational relations between high and low-paid digital labourers. Pursuing twin-aims, the article combines a theoretical reconsideration of digital labour with an analytical discussion of the literature on tech workers to provide a more relational account of work and class in digital capitalism.

https://www.amazon.com/Google-Archipelago-Digital-Gulag-Speech/dp/1943003262/

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Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom begins with familiar cultural politics as points of entry to the book’s theme regarding the reach, penetration, and soon the ubiquity of the digital world. In a book about enormous sea changes brought about by digital technology, Google Archipelago begins and ends with the political, in particular with the objectives of the Big Digital conglomerates as global corporate monopoly capitalists or would-be monopolies.
<p>
Google Archipelago argues that Big Digital technologies and their principals represent not only economic powerhouses but also new forms of governmental power. The technologies of Big Digital not only amplify, extend, and lend precision to the powers of the state, they may represent elements of a new corporate state power.
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In contrast to academics who study digital media and bemoan such supposed horrors as “digital exploitation,” in Google Archipelago, Michael Rectenwald argues that the real danger posed by Big Digital is not “digital capitalism” as such, but leftist totalitarianism, a political outlook shared by academic leftists, who thus cannot recognize it in their object of study. Thus, while imagining that they are radical critics of Big Digital, academic digital media scholars (whom Rectenwald terms “the digitalistas”) actually serve as ideological smokescreens that obscure its real character.
<p>
Two chapters interrupt the book’s genre as non-fiction prose. Part historical science fiction and part memoir, these chapters render the story of a Soviet Gu­lag survivor and defector, and the author’s earlier digital self. Google Archipelago intentionally blurs the lines between argument and story, fact and artifact, the real and the imaginary.This is necessary, Rectenwald argues, because one cannot pretend to describe the Google Archipelago as if from without, as something apart from experience. In any case, soon one will no longer “go on the Internet.” The Internet and cyberspace will be everywhere, while humans and other agents will be digital artifacts within it.
<p>
The Google Archipelago represents the coextension of digitization and physical social space, the conversion of social space and its inhabitants into digital artifacts, and the potential to control populations to degrees unimagined by the likes of Stalin and Mao.

Capitalism, as both its supporters and detractors have long known, tends to be restructured when a crisis hits. Since the 2008 crisis, new digital technologies have given rise to new organizational forms and modes of exploitation that have jointly created a new way of accumulating capital. Described by a proliferating multitude of epochal labels like the “third globalization” and “fourth industrial revolution” or more tailored designations like the “sharing economy,” the “attention economy”, and the “gig economy”, this digitally-powered transformation of capitalism centers on the extraction and (monopolistic) use of arguably the most valuable raw material of the twenty-first century: data. The practical realization of the new, data-based capital accumulation is carried by the business model of the platform – a multisided digital framework that connects individuals with each other and with goods or services. The connectivity digital platforms create gives them a great deal of social and commercial power. Platforms define the terms on which individuals interact and exchange, and have exclusive access to valuable information regarding those individuals’ details, interests, and preferences. As more and more users provide platforms with more and more information to be sold to well-paying third parties, ...

In this article, we investigate labour struggles under the condition of digital capitalism. The main research question we address is: How do German unions evaluate and respond to the rapidly accelerating digitalisation of economy and work? Based on a series of interviews with union representatives in Germany, we trace recent developments within an increasingly digitised economy, outlining challenges and opportunities for unions. Our findings show that the large-scale deployment of digital technologies fragments the workforce, reduces social standards, worsens working conditions, and exacerbates power imbalances to the detriment of the employed. These disadvantages are only insufficiently met with new opportunities to raise public awareness and connect with and mobilise workers by means of digital communication technologies. Our study suggests a growing significance of technological expertise for unions, a need to meet global capital with enhanced international and regional cooperation among labour organisations, and the importance of uniting established unions and grassroots workers' movements in shared struggles to improve the situation of workers under technologyenhanced conditions of globalised exploitation and control.

Yirminci yüzyılın son on yılından itibaren dünyanın ileri kapitalist merkezlerinde bilgi ve yeniliğe dayalı bir 'yeni kapitalizm' aşamasına geçildiği görülmektedir. Bu makalenin amaçlarından biri, merkez ülkelerde gelişen çağdaş kapitalizme ilişkin modern ana-akım ve Marxian teorileri incelemektir. Diğer yandan, bu makalenin diğer bir amacı ise Türkiye ekonomisinin böyle bir yapısal dönüşüm için asgari önkoşulları taşıyıp taşımadığını tartışmaktır. Bu makalede çağdaş ana-akım bilgi teorilerinin basit ve yetersiz yapılarının radikal bir eleştirisi sunulmaktadır. Buna karşın, Marxian teorilerin, daha kapsamlı, karmaşık ve çok boyutlu bir çağdaş kapitalizm perspektifi sağladığı ileri sürülebilir. Bu çalışmada incelenen Marxian yeni kapitalizm teorileri şunlardır: dijital kapitalizm teorisi, otonomist teori, bilişsel kapitalizm teorisi, ulusötesi bilgisel kapitalizm teorisi ve bilişsel materyalizm teorisi. Yeni kapitalizmi, tarihsel kapitalizmin bir aşaması olarak gören Marxian teoriler, toplumsal ilişkilerin tarihsel boyutunu, üretken güçlerin gelişimini, bilgi/güç ilişkilerini ve sınıf çelişkilerini teorik analizlerine dahil etmektedirler. Tekno-iyimser ortodoks iktisatçılar, yeni kapitalizmin yüksek-becerili, yüksek ücretli işler yaratacağını ve ayrıca, toplumsal eşitsizliklere ve iktisadi durgunluğa son vereceğini düşünüyorlardı. Buna karşın, dijital dönüşümün merkez ülkelerde aşırı-birikim sorununu daha da ağırlaştırdığı, iktisadi eşitsizlikleri daha da arttırdığı, kitlesel işsizliği yaygınlaştırdığı ve güvencesiz/geçici istihdamı büyüttüğü gözlemlenmektedir. Diğer yandan, küresel ekonominin çevre ve yarı-çevre ekonomilerinin, yeni kapitalizm çağında ileri kapitalist merkezler ile aralarındaki açığı kapatabilmeleri için ekonomilerini bu yeni çağın gereklerine göre dönüştürmeleri ve teknolojik yenilik odaklı bir iktisadi büyüme modeline geçmelerinin zorunlu olduğu düşünülmektedir. Türkiye'de hem 'elit' entelektüel emek niceliksel ve niteliksel olarak yetersizdir ve hem de eğitimin yeterince yaygınlaşmaması nedeniyle bilişsel kapitalizmin zorunlu unsuru olan kitlesel entelektüellik gelişmemiştir. Ayrıca, Türkiye ekonomisinin önemli 'yapısal zayıflıkları' ve bilim ve teknolojiye ayrılan göreli olarak yetersiz kaynaklar, teknoloji-odaklı uzun-dönemli bir iktisadi dönüşüm için önemli engellerdir.

Wenn Teile der akademischen Linken um 2000 herum von der ‚Wiederkehr des Politischen' geträumt haben, hat sich ihr Wunsch heute als Albtraum realisiert. Die Idee, dass politischer " Widerstreit " (Lyotard) nicht durch bürokratische Sachkenntnis entscheidbar ist, wendet sich gegen Argumente als solche, die "Anteillosen" , deren Anteil Jacques Rancière eingeklagt hat, scheinen vorwiegend depravierte, autoritäre weiße Männer zu sein, der von Ernesto Laclau beschworene "Antagonismus" von Eliten und Volk bringt immer fragwürdigere Eliten an die Macht, und spontaner Massenprotest wendet sich besonders gegen Geflüchtete. Emanzipatorisch orientierte Intellektuelle finden sich damit in einer sozial wie politisch schwierigen Position: Sie können als (beherrschter) Teil der globalen bzw. kosmopolitischen herrschenden Klassen frontal die reaktionären Impulse aus dem Volk abwehren, oder sie können berechtigte Motive einer überwiegend nationalistischen, rassistischen, frauenfeindlichen, antiökologischen, auf autoritäre Führung setzenden Politik freilegen. Die Lage lässt sich jedoch zumindest genauer analysieren, damit ggf. bessere Perspektiven in den Blick kommen. Mein Versuch soll dazu beitragen, indem er, schrittweise tiefer gehend, (1) nach der Stoßrichtung und (2) nach dem Klassencharakter des autoritären Protests fragt, um schließlich (3) auszuloten, wie sich in der ersten großen Krise des digitalen Kapitalismus womöglich der Raum des Politischen insgesamt verschiebt. Da die meisten kursierenden Analysen höchstens bis (2) gehen, erlaubt dieses Vorgehen, von einer Einschätzung des Diskussionsstands zu neuen bzw. klassisch-materialistischen Erklärungen vorzudringen.

Academic labour is often considered to be abstract and disembodied in the popular imagination, and its recent transformation by digital technologies might make this seem even more the case. But the advent of the digital also makes all with digits, physically standardising scholarly activity into the same few motions required to interact with a keyboard, mouse or screen. Academic work has a real, and for some, a lasting, corporeal impact.

Academic labour after repetitive strain injury (RSI) often demands establishing a radically different relationship to the digital, including operating a computer with speech in what is largely a silent, open plan work culture; (re)learning alternative methods of composition; and intellectually unwelcome and financially unsustainable rest breaks from what for many is a vocation in addition to a precarious livelihood.

How do we as scholars with RSI interact differently with or defer the digital in our labour, and what might it mean to have a ‘differigital’ working practice in a digital age? What present and possible forms might ‘differigital’ academic work take? And how might we use them to begin creating a more RSI-positive work environment in the academy?

This participant-driven meeting will be an opportunity to network with others affected by or interested in the causes, impacts and context of RSI, share research, political and personal insights and ways of working.

Attendees are encouraged, but not required, to arrive with a small stimulus to contribute to the discussion, which can take any form, but might include:
• A verbal account of an experience or idea for change;
• A 250 word abstract style summary of prospective, in progress, or published research relevant to the topic;
• An artefact to introduce.

Those experiencing or researching RSI in HEIs are particularly invited to attend, in addition to – but not limited to – equality activists and campaigners; developers of assistive technologies; health and wellbeing practitioners; scholars in digital humanities, medical humanities, critical management studies and disability studies.

It is hoped that the event will be the catalyst for the formation of an alliance that will produce research, offer mutual support and provide advocacy for an extensive but underserved community.

Difference and Repetition: Academic Labour after RSI
Thursday 25th May 2017, 6-7:30 PM
Room 106, School of Arts 43-46 Gordon Square Birkbeck, University of London WC1H

Convenors: Natalie Joelle (Birkbeck) and Chris Till (Leeds Beckett)

Optional RSVP via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/difference-and-repetition-academic-labour-after-rsi-tickets-33547817425

Executive Summary

The success of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is a phenomenon that has not still been adequately studied and elaborated in economical and political theory. Yet FOSS has proved to be a laboratory of social, economical and institutional innovations that seem to have a great relevance for the informational paradigm.

Not only did FOSS emerge in the software, that is in the core technology of the ICT revolution, and is about to become the standard model of production in this industry, but its innovative arrangements have also inspired emulations in many other domains.

The most distinctive  feature of FOSS is that it is organized around a commons: that is, a resource that is governed by licenses which  allow anyone to access, use, copy, modify, develop and redistribute the software. This characteristic has many important implications in the modalities of governance and in the forms of generation and appropriation of value.

FOSS is the clearest evidence of the potential role that new types of common goods are about to play in the emerging digital networked economy and society. Similarly, its surprising trajectory sheds new light on the newly established field of study that has developed around the rediscovery of the notion of the commons in recent decades.

In this sense, while the first wave of studies on the commons has been engaged around the definition of the commons as an autonomous sphere distinct from the market and the state, the evolution of FOSS indicates the importance of studying the governance of these new commons within hybrid configurations, as for example in their modulation with markets.

The successful integration of FOSS in the market and in the capitalistic competition requires a review of the first approaches to this model of production. For example, the experience has shown that FOSS can be used to strategically achieve new forms of centralization and concentration of power and value. Likewise – despite its idiosyncratic form, which does not allow any form of exclusive appropriation - FOSS has demonstrated that it can expand in parallel with new markets.

In order to visualize the relationships between FOSS and markets, a synthetic framework is proposed, that is organized through three concepts: semi-commons, infrastructures and ecosystems generation. Each allows to visualize a different way to modulate a multi-layered structure of regimes of property and value production and appropriation.

While the transition to FOSS in the market is consolidating, public administrations and public policies are still struggling to find a way to engage productively with this new model of technological development and production.

Public policies promoting FOSS have begun early and have not been few. Yet so far no clear model has emerged and the setbacks have not been few.

The rationales for the public administrations to support the use and development of FOSS are both economical and political, as FOSS promises to reduce costs and risks, and increase independence and transparency in the management of critical resources, services and infrastructures.

Public policies so far have underestimated the obstacles generated by the legacies of the past, the lock-in mechanisms produced by the integration of ecosystems of hardware and software producers in previous proprietary platforms and the fragmentation of alternative solutions, undervaluing the costs of integration and maintenance of isolated systems in an environment of hardwares and softwares extremely dynamic.

However, a reversal of the trend is taking place, as FOSS is becoming the new standard approach on the frontiers of innovation (Cloud, Internet of Things, Data centers, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain). As a result, a strong trend towards its use and development in public policy is spreading worldwide. Hundreds of public organizations are currently engaged in a process of practical learning by doing in FOSS development.

As FOSS will play a central role in the new generation of software services, public administrations should not overlook the risks of new traps and dependencies. Even more so, as the FOSS ecosystem has entered a consolidation phase.

EU policy based on abstract principles such as technological neutrality, open standards, impartiality in public procurement has proved difficult to apply and ineffective in preventing the capture of public administrations by private monopolies and lock-in strategies by suppliers.

The increasing role of FOSS in the provision of critical infrastructure and its maturation as a production system will push further institutional innovations in the FOSS ecosystem. One of the most important areas of innovation could come precisely from a greater involvement of public actors.

Three directions can be glimpsed as emerging fields of innovation in public policies:

- An active policy of standardization, as a lever for governance and productivity generation;

- The modulation of mixed forms of governance blending state, market and commons based mechanisms;

- The development of new forms of public-public cooperation.

The Chinese digital technology giants, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT), dominate over their competitors in China across platforms that include e-commerce, digital entertainment, e-finance and artificial intelligence (AI). To understand BAT's corporate power and their strategic role working with the government-in this case, their involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-this paper unveils the capabilities of these three oligopolies and discusses their international expansion in relation to the BRI. The BRI is being constructed on two layers, the physical and digital infrastructure, and the BAT are contributing to the latter. This paper examines the interrelations between BAT and the state through case studies, observing the tensions and potential contradictions arising from the reliance of the Chinese state on the BAT to build digital infrastructure, while the BAT seek to minimize direct state regulation for their datadriven business models.

The article tackles the question of platform capitalism within the framework of a general understanding of the specificity of modern and contemporary capitalism. Digital platforms, which are emerging among the winners from the current pandemic crisis, facilitate processes of capital accumulation, blur the boundaries between politics and economics, and embody a new type of firm. An emphasis is placed on the infrastructural roles performed by platforms, as well as on their ability to reshape existing spaces and produce new ones. In the last section, the authors describe emerging figures of "algorithmic subjectivities" and contend that an effective critique of platform capitalism, whose operations are predicated upon those figures, should take their movements and struggles as its point of departure.

Alex Garland’s recent sf mini-series Devs (2020) has been acclaimed by critics and online commentators, with most praises (and criticisms) usually focusing on both its cinematography and its philosophically charged themes. In an attempt to reassess and to nuance that popular excitement, this paper seeks to analyse the series as a deeply ambivalent sf narrative of cognitive estrangement, one whose main thematic object is the so-called “surveillance capitalism” of Silicon Valley corporations. Particularly, Devs narrates the struggles of a lone mathematician, Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), against her employer, the San Franciscan company Amaya, which is led by its eccentrically megalomaniac founder, Forest (Nick Offerman). As one of the company’s R&D sections (called DEVS) is secretly building a predictive quantum computer –one apparently capable of accurately extrapolating in all directions of time-space–, the series dwells upon the extremities and the violence used by the Amaya corporation in trying to prevent any leaks of information related to such project. In paying attention to this narrative as well as to its audio-visual aesthetics, my argument is that the series both mystifies and demystifies surveillance capitalism, simultaneously subverting hegemonic discourses, yet falling into their ideological trappings. This ambivalence seems especially patent in the representation of said quantum computer: this is a technological novum which on the one hand critically illustrates the system’s drive towards total domination, and on the other hand fetishizes itself, since it is visualised as a quasi-divine source of devotion for viewers, evoking the sense of a technological sublime. Thus, this paper will examine the series with special attention to this dialectic of mystification and demystification, whereby Devs may be described –although in a relatively simplifying manner– as both an sf critique of Silicon Valley’s cultish tendencies, and as a cultish re-mystification of Silicon Valley technologies.

In this study, the implications and limits of Industry 4.0 project will be discussed. Industry 4.0 is a European project that aims to integrate digital networks and manufacturing process with the whole commodity-value chain by using sensors and cyber-physical systems , that is, the integration of computation, networking, and physical processes. In order to understand the Digital Age, the study will first examine Marx's analysis of evolution of Machinery and the social relations that produce this machinery. is will pave the way for conceptualizing automation and arti cial intelligence as the key elements of Industry 4.0. After analysing the origins and social context of Industry 4.0 project, the study will discuss the implications and limits of the "Industry 4.0 initiative". e discussion is built over some crucial questions: If the whole process is digitalized and controlled by computer algorithms as projected, can the industrial production as a whole be optimized and integrated? Do the Big Data and analytics make "online capitalism" possible? On the condition of the contradicting interests and pro ts in capitalist competition, is it possible to think optimization only as a technical problem? Does "the invisible hand" of the market become visible by the Big Data gathered from cyber-physical systems? By discussing these questions, the study will criticise the blackboxing of "algorithms", "optimization" paradigms of the Industry 4.0 discourse. It will argue that blackboxing the "algorithms", "cyber-physical systems" or "Big Data and Analytics" would not hide the problem of agency, the actors seeking for pro t particularly under real-time competition. In the end, the study will suggest that the project would be a false promise for capitalism but an important possibility for another world.

Questo libro è un viaggio alla scoperta di un continente antico, eppure nuovo. Da Google ad Amazon, passando per Baudelaire e Machiavelli, Spinoza e Marx, Ivanhoe, i gladiatori, racconta la genealogia dei lavori autonomi e dipendenti. Roberto Ciccarelli ci guida in una storia unica e sorprendente e mostra cosa hanno in comune il freelance, l’imprenditore di se stesso o lo startupper nell’economia della condivisione e nella gig economy. La domanda non è che cos’è il lavoro, ma la più concreta, e potente: cosa può oggi una forza lavoro?”

Az elmúlt húsz évben az internet és a digitális forradalom látványosan átalakította mindennapjainkat: digitális eszközök és szolgáltatások segítségével intézzük a pénzügyeinket, ezeken keresztül kommunikálunk ismerőseinkkel, az internet vált a fogyasztás elsődleges terévé – és így tovább. Ez az átalakulás természetesen rengeteg társadalmi megrázkódtatással jár, amelyek némelyikét heves viták övezik. A változások gyors üteme miatt azonban a szélesebb nyilvánosság előtt zajló viták legtöbbje inkább emlékeztet morális pánikra, mint higgadt diskurzusra: középpontjukban általában egy tágabb jelenség egy-egy kiragadott aspektusa áll, azt tárgyalják a társadalomra leselkedő komoly veszélyként, majd kis idő múlva már az internetes kultúra egészen más szeletére irányul fokozott figyelem. Ha csak a közelmúltból idézünk fel néhány példát, eszünkbe juthat mondjuk a közösségi médiában terjedő álhírekkel kapcsolatban divatossá vált „posztigazság”-fogalom, ami ugyanolyan gyorsan tűnt el, mint amilyen hirtelen népszerű lett – csak hogy átadja helyét az„orosz hackerekkel” kapcsolatos riadalomnak, hogy aztán egy éles váltással a Bitcoin-árfolyam szédületes változásaira terelődjön a figyelem, majd az is elfelejtődjön ugyanolyan gyorsan.
Hogyan lehetséges az, hogy egy decentralizált, hálózatos technológia – amiről korábban sok szakértő gondolta úgy, hogy jellegéből adódóan alkalmatlan arra, hogy a politikai és gazdasági hatalom rátegye a kezét – mégis ilyen hatékonyan betagozódott napjaink hatalmi rendszerébe? A Fordulat aktuális száma ezekre a kérdésekre igyekszik válaszolni úgy, hogy megvizsgálja a digitális forradalom tágabb kontextusát. Az itt megjelenő szövegek megpróbálják bemutatni, miként változtak a számítástechnikát és az internetet övező ideológiák a hidegháború kezdetétől napjainkig, valamint hogy az elmúlt két-három évtizedben milyen gazdasági-politikai folyamatokba ágyazódott az internet és a digitális ipar robbanásszerű terjedése.

Le innovazioni introdotte dalla Quarta rivoluzione industriale possono risolvere i crescenti ed inascoltati bisogni di coesione e sviluppo socio-economico? Possono superare la retorica e la strumentalizzazione del capitalismo digitale e delle piattaforme che hanno contribuito a liquefare ulteriormente le relazioni, a scomporre il lavoro e a non far crescere, come ci si sarebbe attesi, la fiducia e gli scambi tra le persone interconnesse a mezzo delle piattaforme stesse?
Secondo l’autore questi interrogativi possono risolversi a partire da una prospettiva di natura economica e sociale che tenga conto delle innovazioni tecniche dentro l’esigenza di un paradigma economico civile, sostenibile, rigenerativo e cooperativo basato su reciprocità e mutualità per una nuova economia digitale e collaborativa.
Attraverso la presentazione di FairBnB, uno studio di caso di cooperativismo di piattaforma di home-rental e di turismo responsabile comunitario, l’autore propone una riflessione che tende a comprendere se è possibile combinare: a) il modello cooperativo basato su relazioni fisiche tra soci, scambi in presenza, legami duraturi, relazioni lavorative strutturate all’interno di un progetto d’impresa, fiducia, valori condivisi, interessi omogenei ed un forte legame territoriale; b) l’economia collaborativa che fa di Internet e delle tecnologie digitali un’occasione ed uno spazio relazionale e di mercato.

Can the innovations introduced by the Fourth Industrial Revolution resolve the growing and unheeded needs of social and economic cohesion and development? Can they overcome the rhetoric and instrumentalization of digital capitalism and the platforms that have contributed to further liquefying relationships, to break down work and not to grow, as would be expected, trust and exchanges between people interconnected by means of platforms same?
According to the author these questions can be resolved starting from an economic and social perspective that takes into account the technical innovations within the need for a civil, sustainable, regenerative, cooperative paradigm based on reciprocity and mutuality for a new digital and collaborative economy.
Through the presentation of FairBnB, a case study of a cooperative platform for home-rental and responsible community tourism, the author proposes a reflection that tends to understand if it is possible to combine: the cooperative model based on physical relations between members, on-site exchanges, lasting links, structured working relationships within a business project, trust, shared values, homogeneous interests and a strong territorial link; the collaborative economy that makes the Internet and digital technologies an opportunity and a relational and market space.

This chapter analyzes the cycle of worker contention at Amazon logistics in Italy, explaining the link between digitalization in logistics and worker mobilization. In this case, workers’ collective action has shown the critical aspects of the Amazon model and its introduction of algorithms in delivery systems. The analysis of the mobilization is twofold. Focused on worker power, repertoire of action and claims, it explains on the one hand, how technology has affected working conditions and on the other hand, how worker organization triggered specific forms of unionism. While Amazon’s algorithmic innovation brings in what can be called a digital taylorism, this case of contention shows the forms of worker mobilization, which led to a critique of its implications and to new processes of unionization. Finally, the case disconfirms any determinism and shows how technological innovation can be negotiated as part of collective bargaining where the regulation of an employment relations system plays a central role

This compact volume aims to take stock of the myriad critical responses elicited in recent years by transformations in computational media and digital capital. Attending to the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence in the construction of digital media environments, these essays collectively highlight the contingency embedded within algorithmic functionality while addressing the oppressive organizational structures and governmental capabilities such operations make available to big data. Containing entries from Mark Hansen, Luciana Parisi, Claus Pius, and others, Critique and the Digital provides an impressive overview of both the theoretical and practical stakes of coming to terms with the digital in its increasingly ubiquitous forms.

This article adds to the literature on digital capitalisms by
introducing a new state-led model called ‘digital ID capitalism’.
Here, state agencies help guarantee personal data for commercial
exploitation by connecting it to the provision of state welfare
services. This is in contrast to the usual focus on US Big Tech
corporations’ use of personal data from the internet. Describing
how the system works in India, it explains how businesses make
money from the personal data collected. While doing so, it draws
some of its elements into traditional political economy concerns
with the relationships between state, business and labour. The
benefit of framing it as a capitalist system is that it sharpens the
focus on the corresponding social relations and potential for
group governance of this important twenty-first century resource.

Contrario a las lecturas posmarxistas del Fragmento sobre las Máquinas de Marx, en este trabajo sostengo que el Intelecto General (General Intellect) no es una fuerza revolucionaria, sino que constituye la autoconciencia del capital como forma ideológica, creando la apariencia de su autovalorización a través del sistema tecnológico. En lugar de un supuesto agotamiento de la teoría del valor-trabajo promulgado por lo que llamo perspectivas Ciber-Marxistas, aquí propongo –con base en el pensamiento de Antonio Gramsci, Biaggio de Giovanni y Alfred Sohn-Rethel- la pertinencia de un enfoque Ciber-Gramsciano. En tal perspectiva, la digitalización contribuye a la transformación de la forma estatal, la cual se diluye en la vida cotidiana dando paso a una síntesis social emergente mediante la cual ocurre la lógica capitalista de separación-ocultamiento. En este marco, el Intelecto General debe entenderse como una estructura ideológica dentro de lo que Gramsci llamó el Estado Integral del Capital, cuya comprensión crítica debe situarse en el terreno del estudio de la hegemonía, y no en la dimensión de las transformaciones del proceso de valorización.

The conventional labour- capital relationship that we inherited from industrial capitalism continues unchanged in the age of digital capitalism. The digitalization of capitalism did not reduce the pressure and exploitation of capital on labour, it merely changed its form. In this context, the main objective of this study will be to evaluate the internal dynamics of digitalizing capitalism and the transformation of labour in light of new technologies. With this objective in mind, the first chapter of the study will focus on the concepts of digital capitalism and cognitive capitalism, and the similarities and differences between them. The second chapter of the study will focus on how labour is transformed in digitalizing capitalism, how labour takes shape in the digital economy and the dialectical relationship between the concepts of digital labour and free labour.

This essay is the introduction to the special issue "Control Societies I: Media, Culture, Technology," ed. by Simon Schleusener (Freie Universität Berlin) and Florian Cord (TU Dresden). The special issue is dedicated to Gilles Deleuze's influential "Postscript on Control Societies," thirty years after its initial publication.
https://coilsoftheserpent.org/category/issue-5-2020/
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-715962

With the higher education transitioning to online learning platforms during the coronavirus, cameras in classes have become incredibly prominent in academic and media discourse. Media, Facebook groups, and virtual events in academic settings often dealt with learning and teaching experiences with cameras in classes. Dealing with cameras, they also described the difficulties and disappointments from academic teaching. This article examines the same references to camera activity in academic classes to understand students' and professors' different positions concerning classes and academic teaching. Based on ethnographic observations in virtual discussions and analysis of media discourse on the subject, I will point out the connection between the discussion of cameras and the critical voices towards the higher education system in general. Finally, I will analyze the emotional and therapeutic language in which this critique is formulated.

Digitale Leitunternehmen wie Google, Apple, Amazon oder Alibaba setzen derzeit verstärkt auf die Expansion im Bereich der Unternehmenssoftware. Hier treffen sie nicht nur auf etablierte Anbieter wie SAP oder Salesforce, sondern auch auf ein Produzentenuniversum mit eigenen Vorstellungen zur Datenökonomie, Arbeitsorganisation und der Verteilung von Wertschöpfung. Wer wird die zweite Halbzeit des digitalen Kapitalismus dominieren?