An before post considered Dave Elder-Vass’s real interesting handling of the contemporary digital economy. In here .) Influenza A ...
An before post considered Dave Elder-Vass’s real interesting handling of the contemporary digital economy. In here.)
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 novel volume yesteryear Nick Srnicek looks at this work from a dissimilar betoken of view. In Platform Capitalism Srnicek proposes to sympathize the realities of our electrical flow “digital economy” according to traditional ideas well-nigh capitalism too profit. Here is a preliminary declaration of his approach:
The uncomplicated wager of the volume is that nosotros tin acquire a lot well-nigh major tech companies yesteryear taking them to hold upward economical actors inside a capitalist manner of production. This agency abstracting from them as cultural actors defined yesteryear the values of the Californian ideology, or as political actors seeking to wield power. By contrast, these actors are compelled to attempt out profits inward monastic tell to fend off competition. This places strict limits on what constitutes possible too predictable expectations of what is probable to occur. Most notably, capitalism demands that firms constantly attempt out novel avenues for profit, novel markets, novel commodities, too novel agency of exploitation. For some, this focus on uppercase rather than labour may suggest a vulgar econo-mism; but, inward a reason where the labour movement has been significantly weakened, giving uppercase a priority of agency seems entirely to reverberate reality. (Kindle Locations 156-162)In other words, at that topographic point is non a major suspension from General Motors, alongside its assembly lines, corporate management, too vehicles, to IBM, alongside its products, software, too innovations, to Google, alongside its purely abstract too information-intensive products. All are similar inward their basic corporate navigation systems: brand decisions today that volition back upward or growth profits tomorrow. In fact, each of these companies falls inside the reach of the novel digital economy, according to Srnicek:
As a preliminary definition, nosotros tin say that the digital economic scheme refers to those businesses that increasingly rely upon information technology, data, too the mesh for their draw organisation models. This is an expanse that cuts across traditional sectors – including manufacturing, services, transportation, mining, too telecommunication – too is inward fact becoming essential to much of the economic scheme today. (Kindle Locations 175-177).What has changed, according to the economical history constructed yesteryear Srnicek, is that the creation too command of information has all of a abrupt conk a vast too dynamic source of potential profit, too capitalist firms cause got adapted speedily to capture these profits.
The restructuring associated alongside the rising of information-intensive economical activity has greatly changed the nature of work:
Simultaneously, the generalised deindustrialisation of the high-income economies agency that the production of piece of work becomes immaterial: cultural content, knowledge, affects, too services. This includes media content similar YouTube too blogs, as good as broader contributions inward the shape of creating websites, participating inward online forums, too producing software. (Kindle Locations 556-559)But as it takes the shape of specialized data-intensive piece of work inside traditional companies: blueprint experts, marketing analysis of “big data” on consumer trends, the run of large simulations to guide draw organisation decision-making, the run of automatically generated information from vehicles to guide futurity applied scientific discipline changes.
In monastic tell to capture the turn a profit opportunities associated alongside the availability of large data, something else was needed: an organizational reason for aggregating too monetizing the information that be or then us. This is the conception that comes inward for Srnicek's greatest focus of attention: the platform.
This chapter argues that the novel draw organisation model that eventually emerged is a powerful novel type of firm: the platform. Often arising out of internal needs to grip data, platforms became an efficient way to monopolise, extract, analyse, too run the increasingly large amounts of information that were existence recorded. Now this model has come upward to expand across the economy, as numerous companies contain platforms: powerful engineering companies (Google, Facebook, too Amazon), dynamic start-ups (Uber, Airbnb), industrial leaders (GE, Siemens), too agricultural powerhouses (John Deere, Monsanto), to scream only a few. (Kindle Locations 602-607).
What are platforms? At the most full general level, platforms are digital infrastructures that enable 2 or to a greater extent than groups to interact. They hence seat themselves as intermediaries that choose together dissimilar users: customers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers, too fifty-fifty physical objects. More oftentimes than not, these platforms also come upward alongside a serial of tools that enable their users to build their ain products, services, too marketplaces. Microsoft’s Windows operating scheme enables software developers to practise applications for it too sell them to consumers; Apple’s App Store too its associated ecosystem (XCode too the iOS SDK) enable developers to build too sell novel apps to users; Google’s search engine provides a platform for advertisers too content providers to target people searching for information; too Uber’s taxi app enables drivers too passengers to substitution rides for cash. (Kindle Locations 607-616)Srnicek distinguishes 5 large types of digital information platforms that cause got been built out as draw organisation models: advertising, cloud, industrial, product, too "lean" platforms (the latter exemplified yesteryear Uber).
Srnicek believes that firms organized or then digital platforms are dependent area to several of import dynamics too tendencies: "expansion of extraction, positioning as a gatekeeper, convergence of markets, too enclosure of ecosystems" (kl 1298). These tendencies are created yesteryear the imperative yesteryear the platform-based draw solid to generate profits. Profits depend upon monetizing data; too information has petty value inward small-scale volume. So the most fundamental imperative is -- majority collection of information from private consumers.
If information collection is a key chore of platforms, analysis is the necessary correlate. The proliferation of data-generating devices creates a vast novel repository of data, which requires increasingly large too sophisticated storage too analysis tools, farther driving the centralisation of these platforms. (kl 1337-1339)So privacy threats emerging from the novel digital economic scheme are non a bug; they are an inherent characteristic of design.
This appears to atomic number 82 us to Srnicek's most basic conclusion: the novel digital economic scheme is only similar the one-time industrial economic scheme inward i of import respect. Firms are wholly focused on generating profits, too they blueprint intelligent strategies to let themselves to appropriate ever-larger profits from the raw materials they process. In the instance of the digital economic scheme the raw fabric is data, too the profits come upward from centralizing too monopolizing access to data, too deploying information to generate profits for other firms (who inward plough pay for access to the data). And revenues too profits cause got no correspondence to the size of the firm's workforce:
Tech companies are notoriously small. Google has or then 60,000 straightaway employees, Facebook has 12,000, piece WhatsApp had 55 employees when it was sold to Facebook for $ 19 billion too Instagram had xiii when it was purchased for $ 1 billion. By comparison, inward 1962 the most meaning companies employed far larger numbers of workers: AT& T had 564,000 employees, Exxon had 150,000 workers, too GM had 605,000 employees. Thus, when nosotros beak over the digital economy, nosotros should comport inward hear that it is something broader than only the tech sector defined according to measure classifications. (Kindle Locations 169-174)Marx's theory of capitalism fundamentally originates inward a theory of conflict of involvement too a theory of exploitation. In link). But inward Srnicek's reading of the contemporary digital economic scheme (and Elder-Vass's as well) the focus shifts away from project too towards the consumer. The principal conflict inward the digital economic scheme is betwixt the platform draw solid that seeks to acquire our information too the consumers who desire the digital services but who are poorly aware of the terms to their privacy. And hither it is to a greater extent than hard to brand an declaration well-nigh exploitation. Are consumers existence exploited inward this exchange? Or are they getting fair value through extensive too valuable digital services, for the give upward of their privacy inward the shape of information collection of clicks, purchases, travel, telephone usage, too the countless other ways inward which private information winds upward inward the aggregation engines?
In an unexpected way, this analysis leads us dorsum to a query that seems to belong inward the nineteenth century: what afterwards all is the source of value too wealth? And who has a valid claim on a share? What principles of judge should regulation the distribution of the wealth of society? The project theory of value had an response to the question, but it is an response that didn't cause got a lot of validity inward 1850 too has none today. But inward that instance nosotros postulate to address the query again. The soaring inequalities of income too wealth that capitalism has produced since 1980 suggest that our economic scheme has lost its command mechanisms for equity; too mayhap this has something to practise alongside the fact that a slap-up bargain of the coin existence generated inward capitalism today comes from command of information rather than the adding of value to products through labor. Oddly enough, mayhap Marx's other large thought is relevant here: social ownership of the agency of production. If at that topographic point were a substantial piece of public-sector ownership of large information firms, including fiscal institutions, the resulting menstruation of income too wealth mightiness hold upward expected to commence to right the hyper-inequalities our economic scheme is currently generating.
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