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
[...] It is however mistaken to see Facebook as a communications company: it does not sell communication or access to communication, but user data and targeted advert space. Facebook is one of the world’s largest advertising agencies.
[...] Corporations such as Amazon.com and Apple do not just exploit one type of digital labour, but different ones: Amazon.com doesn’t just put a rent on freelance services via Mechanical Turk, it also sells physical goods such as the Kindle and paperbacks and intangible goods such as e-books. Apple’s primary income source is the sale of digital technologies such as Apple computers and the iPhone. But Apple also sells content via its iTunes store. Given the global and convergent character of transnational information corporations, it is not feasible to separate the physical and the mental labour conducting for these companies. Digital workers form a collective workforce. The phenomenon of cultural and digital labour shows that culture and the economy are not separate.
The working conditions are as poor as described in the two examples because global information corporations are profitable businesses: Apple’s profits amounted in 2015 to US$53.4 billion 3 . Amazon’s profits were in the same year US$596 million. There is a class antagonism between information labour and information capital. These conditions can only be changed if the information workers of the world unite at the transnational level in order to challenge the power of information capital. [...] The dialectic takes on a very political form in information capitalism so that class relations bring about highly exploited forms of labour. At the same time, many digital media companies have come under criticism for avoiding paying taxes, which not just increases their profits, but also deprives states of tax income and supports austerity measures that destroy the welfare state and threaten social security.
[...] The world of information technology is one that is shaped by a dialectic of repression and emancipatory struggles. Digital media are technologies of domination and liberation at the same time. These potentials are, however, not equally distributed. In a class-based society, we can always take the dominative use of technologies for certain, whereas alternative uses aiming at liberation are much more fragile and precarious. Only political praxis can bring about humanity’s emancipation from repression. A critical theory of communication and society stands in solidarity with those who resist and oppose the corporationalisation, commodification and bureaucratisation of communication and the world.
daaaaamn
Platforms beat pipelines because platforms scale more efficiently by eliminating gatekeepers. Until recently, most businesses were built around products, which were designed and made at one end of the pipeline and delivered to consumers at the other end. Today, plenty of pipeline-based businesses still exist—but when platform-based businesses enter the same marketplace, the platforms virtually always win.
One reason is that pipelines rely on inefficient gatekeepers to manage the flow of value from the producer to the consumer. In the traditional publishing industry, editors select a few books and authors from among the thousands offered to them and hope the ones they choose will prove to be popular. It’s a time-consuming, labor-intensive process based mainly on instinct and guesswork. By contrast, Amazon’s Kindle platform allows anyone to publish a book, relying on real-time consumer feedback to determine which books will succeed and which will fail. The platform system can grow to scale more rapidly and efficiently because the traditional gatekeepers—editors—are replaced by market signals provided automatically by the entire community of readers.
The elimination of gatekeepers also allows consumers greater freedom to select products that suit their needs. The traditional model of higher education forces students and their parents to purchase one-size-fits-all bundles that include administration, teaching, facilities, research, and much more. In their role as gatekeepers, universities can require families to buy the entire package because it is the only way they can get the valuable certification that a degree offers. However, given the choice, many students would likely be selective in the services they consume. Once there is an alternate certification that employers are willing to accept, universities will find it increasingly challenging to maintain the bundle. Unsurprisingly, developing such an alternate certification is among the primary goals of platform education firms such as Coursera.
this is total BS. the platform becomes the fuckin gatekeper. also i think evgeny morozov has a good take on the flaws of the kindle self-publishing model somewhere
also the bit about higher education makes me absolutely nauseous
for diss: the fact that these people (following the mainstream view) dont realise how much platforms that putatively "eliminate" gatekeepers instead become new gatekeepers, even more power than power, process mediated via tech
[...] How do you convert a product to a platform in the business-to-business (B2B) arena? Many corporations own massive fixed assets like power generation plants, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, or tracts of farmland. How do you build platforms around those?
The answer: you de-link ownership of the physical asset from the value it creates. This allows the use of the asset to be independently traded and applied to its best use—that is, the use that creates the greatest economic value—rather than being restricted to uses specific to the owner. As a result, efficiency and value rise dramatically.
this is literally just like the worst thing about financialisation. kinda equivalent in stupidity to making derivatives (skimming off the top without bearing any of the risk ... startup founder's wet dream)
In the complexity of the governance issues they face, today’s biggest platform businesses resemble nation-states. With more than 1.5 billion users, Facebook oversees a “population” larger than China’s. Google handles 64 percent of the online searches in the U.S. and 90 percent of those in Europe, while Alibaba handles more than 1 trillion yuan ($162 billion) worth of transactions a year and accounts for 70 percent of all commercial shipments in China. Platform businesses at this scale control economic systems that are bigger than all but the biggest national economies. No wonder Brad Burnham, one of the lead investors at Union Square Ventures, responded to the introduction of Facebook Credits—a short-lived system of virtual currency for use in playing online games—by wondering what the move said about Facebook’s monetary policy. In a similar vein, we might ask: In choosing to apply unilateral software standards as opposed to multilateral standards (as we saw in chapter 7), what kind of foreign policy is Apple pursuing? Is Twitter following an industrial policy based on investment in “state-owned” services or one relying on decentralized development by others? What does Google’s approach to censorship in China tell us about the company’s human rights policy?
for diss: even mainstream proponents of SV recognise the degree to which they've become very powerful and even more powerful than nation-states in some key areas (but dont ask the obvious question: where is the democratic control)
Thus, when a firm can erect barriers to entry, it can keep competitors out, and entrants with substitute products cannot storm the castle. When a firm can subjugate suppliers, competition among them weakens their bargaining power so the firm can keep its costs low. When a firm can subjugate buyers by keeping them relatively small, disunited, and powerless, the firm can keep its prices high.
In this model, the firm maximizes profits by avoiding ruinous competition for itself but encouraging it for everyone else in the value chain. Advantage is found in industry structures that create a protective moat—one that enables the firm to segment markets, differentiate products, control resources, avoid price wars, and defend its profit margins.
think about how this applies to global value chains of commodity production re: digital advertising companies
[...] But beyond being pro-technology the government has also uncritically accepted much of Silicon Valley's rhetoric of disruptive innovation. It is remarkable that the Bay Area technology industry can continue to see itself as a collection of scrappy non-conformist outsiders while accumulating the greatest collection of private fortunes in the world. [...]
the way the industry sees itself - useful to draw out for Tribune piece
An investigation by Vanessa Houlder of the Financial Times showed that up to a third of the price gap between hotels and Airbnb rentals is due to tax differences, with hotels being subject to business taxes and value-added taxes that almost all Airbnb hosts avoid, while many Airbnb hosts benefit from the Sharing Economy allowance mentioned above. Airbnb also avoids costs such as commercial-level fire and safety protection and accessibility features, which its competitors must pay to install. [...]
also think about the labour implications ... more flexible, less "downtime" ie squeezing out more work per dollar
The Sharing Economy is a movement: it is a movement for deregulation. Major financial institutions and influential venture capital funds are seizing an opportunity to challenge rules made by democratic city governments around the world, and to reshape cities in their own interests. It’s not about building an alternative to a corporate-driven market economy, it’s about extending the deregulated free market into new areas of our lives. An enthusiasm for “the end of ownership,” the title of one Andreessen Horowitz blog post on the Sharing Economy, is difficult to take seriously when it comes from those who actually own the companies involved. [...]