archive/dissertation
Nick Srnicek,
Douglas Rushkoff,
Robert W. McChesney,
Christian Fuchs,
Tim O'Reilly,
Franklin Foer,
McKenzie Wark,
Mark Andrejevic,
Evgeny Morozov,
Wolfgang Streeck
possibly relevant for my dissertation
Since it has to do with knowledge-goods, financialisation appears in a first phase to remove the obstacles that these present to their transformation into goods that are rival, divisible and excludable. But, in the era of the digital, it calls for the creation of enclosures by means of new property rights and digital management rights. These new enclosures have a depressive effect on the intensity and quality of innovation. The alternative strategies consist in the creation of new public spaces and conditions for free public access to the digital commons [...]
[...] The economy is not based on knowledge as such (although society itself is), but on the exploitation of knowledge. With the digital revolution [...] codified knowledge (databases, software) becomes information-goods and public knowledge. Economic models which since industrial capitalism have been based on the sale of them are in serious crisis: digitisation has drastically downgraded the old implementation of intellectual property rights, while the advantages gained in the field of codified knowledge are lasting for less and less time. [...]
[...] Internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter provide access to means of communication without selling access or content as commodity, yet they do not stand outside the commodity form, but rather commodify users' data. In return for the commodification of data, Facebook and Twitter provide a means of communication to their users. These means could be considered as being in-kind goods provided as return for the users granting the companies the possibility to access and commodify personal data. [...] users on Facebook and Twitter do not receive a universal medium of exchange, but rather one specific means of communication. By giving users access to their platforms, Facebook and Twitter do not provide general means of survival, but instead access to a particular means of communication whose use serves their own profit interests. This is not to say that I argue for payments to users of corporate Internet platforms that are advertising-financed. I rather argue for the creation of non-commercial non-profit alternatives that altogether escape, sublate and struggle against the commodity form.
glad to see he sidesteps the Jaron Lanier trap, but what does he propose should happen to FB/Twitter as they are now?
[...] Whereas wage labour is coerced by the threat of physical violence (the threat is death because of the lack of being able to purchase and consume goods), audience labour is coerced by ideological violence (the threat is to have fewer social contacts because of missing information from the media and missing communication capacities that are needed for sustaining social relations). Audiences are under the ideological control of capitalists who possess control over the means of communication. If for example people stop using Facebook and social networking sites, they may miss certain social contact opportunities. They can refuse to become a Facebook worker, just like an employee can refuse to work for a wage, but they may as a consequence suffer social disadvantages in society. Commercial media coerce individuals to use them. The more monopoly power they possess, the easier it gets to exert this coercion over media consumers and users.
in response to Brett Caraway's claim that audiences are not commodities (2011)
for diss: cite this to say people CAN't boycott
Social media users are double objects of commodification: they are commodities themselves and through this commodification their consciousness becomes, while online, permanently exposed to commodity logic in the form of advertisements. Most online time is advertising time. [...] advertisements do not necessarily represent consumers' real needs and desires because the ads are based on calculated assumptions, whereas needs are much more complex and spontaneous. The ads mainly reflect marketing decisions and economic power relations. They do not simply provide information about products as offers to buy, but present information about products of powerful companies.
cite this: information tech enables creation of a new frontier/digital domain where commodity logic is amplified, accelerated, spread everywhere more deeply
[...] Money is the dominant medium of capitalism [...] Those who control and accumulate money power are therefore equipped with a resource that puts them at a strategic advantage. This means that alternative online platforms in capitalism are facing power inequalities that stem from the asymmetric distributions of money and other resources that are inherent in capitalism. Practically this means that alternative platforms have less money and fewer users than Facebook. [...]
[...] Other labour-intensive apps--such as TaskRabbit, which allows users to hire people for short-term gigs as errand runners--work not because they make unskilled labour vastly more productive, but because unskilled labour is abundant and cheap enough to make it more economical to harness workers to do unproductive jobs: waiting in queues, for example.
at least he recognises this
[...] Uber's PR materials like to point out that the service is great for human drivers, offering them access to flexible, well-paid work. To investors, meanwhile, Uber emphasizes its desire to be a pioneer in the development of autonomous cab fleets.
cite this on the contradictory messages Uber provides to investors vs drivers
The digital revolution makes it far easier and cheaper to keep an eye on certain sorts of workers and assess their performance. As a result, the boundaries of the typical firm have shifted. [...]
ah yes, the surveillance capitalism aspect which he seems to think of as a good thing
That the vectoralist class has replaced capital as the dominant exploiting class can be seen in the form that the leading corporations take. These firms divest themselves of their productive capacity, as this is no longer a source of power. They rely on a competing mass of capitalist contractors for the manufacture of their products. Their power lies in monopolizing intellectual property--patents, copyrights and trademarks--and the means of reproducing their value--the vectors of communication. The privatization of information becomes the dominant, rather than a subsidiary, aspect of commodified life.