Dear Colleagues:
Digitalism is here… stabbing
capitalism. It seems the musketeers of Trump, namely Musk and his friends, are
the first stabbers. Capitalism will not die easily and quickly. Even communist
China had become capitalist after Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 declarations. The
social, economic, and political power that culminated in the hands of
capitalists is enormous compared with that of the feudal lord, but the
intelligence of the human has more historical accumulation and intrinsic and
scientific potential to change things.
Walter Benjamin wrote in his
article in 1935, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”:
“…When
Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode
was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them
prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic
production, and through his presentation showed what could be expected of
capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to
exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity but ultimately to create
conditions that would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself. The
transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than
that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all
areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it
be indicated what form this has taken…”
There is no technological
regression in world history, although social, economic, and political
repetitions and U-turns are inevitable.
That is why, in the
electronic age, Marshall McLuhan declared the social and economic "Global
Village", asserted that world politics were turning into the Middle Ages,
although the technology leaped forward to digitalism and politics regressed into
ecumenism.
Intelligence is
persistent; humans are volatile.
Intelligence is
with us; humans are transient.
Let’s get
into it:
Their Algorithmic
Constitutions? On The Emergence and Functioning of Platform Governance
Prof Ignas Kalpokas, Vytautas Magnus University, May 12, 2023
While the idea of platform governance is not new, the
complex nature of its functioning and the reasons for its emergence and
entrenchment still lack holistic conceptualisation. While it is impossible to
develop such a perspective in a single blog post, the considerations below are
intended as a sensitising tool and a call to think about platform governance as
simultaneously premised upon societal developments from which it has
emerged and a pervasive force shaping contemporary societies.
In order to better understand the how and why of
platform governance, at least two arguments are possible, although they are by
no means mutually exclusive: a historico-political and an economic one.
On the historico-political side – and for perhaps the
most eloquent account, see De Gregorio –
attention is drawn to the convergence in time between neoliberal deregulation
policies adopted by states and the rapid expansion of the Internet and the
associated digital technologies. The companies that have sprung from this
development have not only benefitted from the lax regulation of their own
business activities but have also stepped in to fill the regulatory and
governance lacunae left by the retreating state.
However, there is an important caveat: platform
companies have acquired quasi-public functions without the corresponding checks
and mechanisms for public oversight. While the public is capable to exert
democratic control over decision-making bodies (or, at least, that is the ideal
anyway, subsequently enabling critiques of democratic deficit or opening up the
space for more radical democratic alternatives) and the regulatory power of
states is (or, at least, ought to be) limited by constitutional norms and
international human rights commitments, that is entirely absent from platform
governance. Crucially, even the normative ‘ought’ element is absent – although
platform governance practices are typically premised upon sets of rules, norms,
or guidelines, often framed in terms of ‘community’ or similarly popular (if
not populist) references, they are, instead, sets of externally imposed
demands, based upon the commercial interests of platform companies and/or the
personal visions of tech entrepreneurs.
For
the rest of the article: https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/their-algorithmic-constitutions-on-the-emergence-and-functioning-of-platform-governance/
What Ignas Kalpokos rightfully puts forward against Yanis Varoufakis’ TECHNO-FEUDALISM and misses about digital social and economic platforms are both, in my book... Digitalism vs. Capitalism.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9SJ3XSL
