The Communication of Capital: Digital Media and the Logic of Acceleration

Manzerolle, Vincent; Kjøsen, Atle Mikkola

doi:10.31269/triplec.v10i2.412

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…As other theorists have noted, media, as a force on the relationship between time and space, is primarily concerned with circulation (Manzerolle and Kjøsen 2012). We suggest that because media and circulation are sensitive to time and space (communication and transport), media and circulation thrust planetary urbanization, circulation labour, and technological advancements centre stage in a competitive race to realize profit.…”

Section: Circulation As Production and Materiality Of Immaterials Labourmentioning

confidence: 69%

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Roos¹,

Kostakis²,

Giotitsas³

2016

tripleC

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Today, two great signs of change are occurring. On the one hand, the capitalist world economy is putting tremendous pressure on the earth's biosphere and bringing an onslaught of destruction to immediate environments and vulnerable people worldwide. On the other hand, the rise of new and progressive social-economic foundations is the result of an unprecedented increase of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Therefore it is arguably more crucial than ever to understand how social, economic and ecological foundations of the internet and ICT infrastructures are interwoven. What are we-as scholars, activists and citizens-to make of ICTs that seem to emerge from an economic and social system based upon ecological destruction and social oppression, while at the same time engaging millions of people in the proliferation of information, knowledge and active democratic collaboration? This special issue investigates how we can begin to understand this problem, and how we can hope to balance the perils and promises of ICTs in order to make way for a just and sustainable paradigm.Keywords: Commons based peer production, peer-to-peer, political ecology, ICTs, materiality, immateriality, transition, sustainability, digital commons.Recent studies by Christian Fuchs have examined the complex web of production relations and the new division of digital labour that makes possible the vast and cheap ICT infrastructure as we know it (Fuchs 2013;. The analysis partly reveals that ICT products and infrastructure embody slave-like conditions that perpetually force mine and assembly workers into positions of dependency. Expanding this argument, the WWF has reported (Reed and Miranda 2007) that mining in the Congo basin poses considerable threats to the local environment in the form of pollution, loss of biodiversity, and an increased presence of businessas-usual made possible by roads and railways. This research highlights that ICTs are inherently material, as opposed to purely cognitive or code based, because the ICT infrastructure under the given economic structure embodies slave-like working conditions, various class relations and undesirable ecological consequences (see also Humphrey 2001). Thus, the position that views the emerging digital economy as purely immaterial is challenged.At the same time, the emerging digital commons provide a new and promising platform for social developments, arguably enabled by the progressive dynamics of ICT development. These are predominantly manifested within commons-based peer production, i.e., a new mode of collaborative, social production ; and grassroots desktop manufacturing or community-driven makerspaces, i.e. forms of bottom-up, distributed manufacturing. The most well-known examples of commons-based peer production are the free/open source software projects and the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia. While these novel forms of social organisation are immanent in capitalism, they also present the potential to challenge the dominant capitalist system of production and ev...

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Section: Circulation As Production and Materiality Of Immaterials Labourmentioning

confidence: 69%

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Roos¹,

Kostakis²,

Giotitsas³

2016

tripleC

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“…As recognized by a growing literature of "time studies," the speed imperative constitutes a core dynamic of the capitalist system, predicated on competition and the need to commodify labour time and accelerate the turnover time of capital by speeding up research and development, production, distribution, and consumption cycles (see Harvey 1989, Hassan 2003Manzerolle and Kjøsen 2012).…”

Section: Fast Capitalism In and Out Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism

Wolfson¹,

Treré²,

Gerbaudo³

et al. 2017

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1 tripleC 15 (2), 2017, pp. 390-542 1 Please note that the editors appear in reversed alphabetical order, not in order of importance. This special issue represents a collective effort, and all the four editors contributed equally to it. Multiple Temporalities of the Movements Michael HardtDuke University, Durham, USA, hardt@duke.eduThe clocks seem to be running faster these days. A new cycle of struggle explodes on the scene and then in a few short years it seems to have burnt out and passed on to another. Even the recent past quickly fades from view as we speed past. Cycles of struggle used to continue to develop over decades. Think of the waves of slave rebellions that emanated from the Caribbean through much of the 19 th century, or the communist agitation in the decades leading up to and following the Soviet 1917, or the anti-colonial revolts throughout the 20 th century. Even the explosion of movements across the world in 1968 extended at least throughout the 1970s. Rather than lamenting that contemporary movements are too brief and stunted, however, we should recognize the ways they are embedded in multiple temporalities that link them to the past and embed them in long-term political projects.A standard narrative of recent cycles of struggle, limiting its vision to Europe and North America, goes something like this. The alterglobalization movements gained global visibility in Seattle in 1999 and reached their demise not long after the Genoa protests two years later; the encampments and occupations of the 2011 movement of squares seemed to be exhausted after Gezi Park was cleared in 2013; and the new electoral projects that mix with social movements -the success of national parties, such as Syriza and Podemos are most visible, but the municipal victories, such as that in Barcelona, are at least as importanthave been the focus of much political energy since 2015. Moreover, this narrative of brief cycles and rapid extinction is often told in terms of failures and lessons learned, and thus passages to different -even opposite -organizational strategies. According to this view, for example, the errors of the alterglobalization movement, specifically its nomadic character, moving from one summit meeting to the next, from the WTO protests to those of the G8, was answered and redressed by the local, sedentary nature of the encampments and occupations. Similarly, the failure of both the alterglobalization movements and the movement of squares to achieve electoral, institutional change and their refusal to pose limited policy demands led to the formation of new parties and electoral coalitions. The narrative appears to trace the trajectory of a ping-pong ball, passing over to the opposite side each time a lesson is learned.The impression of rapid change in social movement organization is often reinforced by the focus on media and communication: the swift rate of technological change gives the impression of accelerated rhythms of political shifts. The independent media centers of the alterglobalization movements...

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“…Similarly, Daubs and Manzerolle (2016) have argued that "app-centric media" employ an imagery of autonomy and empowerment for both users and producers while being grounded in the political culture of neoliberalism, control, and commodification of user data. This is particularly true not only if we focus on discourses surrounding the "App worker" as suggested by DyerWitheford (2014) but also if we consider the complex relationship between apps, users, and commodities as discussed by Manzerolle and Kjøsen (2012).…”

Section: The App Economy Data Mining and Pregnancy Appsmentioning

confidence: 99%

BabyVeillance? Expecting Parents, Online Surveillance and the Cultural Specificity of Pregnancy Apps

Barassi

2017

Social Media + Society

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The rapid proliferation of self-tracking pregnancy apps raises critical questions about the commodification and surveillance of personal data in family life while highlighting key transformations in the social experience of pregnancy. In the last 2 years, we have seen the emergence of significant research in the field. On one hand, scholars have highlighted the political economic dimension of these apps by showing how they relate to new practices of quantification of the self. On the other hand, they have focused on users’ experience and on the affective, pleasurable, and socially meaningful dimension of these technologies. Although insightful, current research has yet to consider the cultural specificity of these technologies. Drawing on a digital ethnography of the 10 most reviewed pregnancy apps among UK and US users at the beginning of 2016, the article will show not only that the information ecologies of pregnancy apps are extremely varied but also that users’ interaction with these technologies is critical and culturally specific. By discussing pregnancy apps as complex ethnographic environments—which are shaped by different cultural tensions and open-ended processes of negotiation, interaction, and normativity—the article will argue that—in the study of infancy online—we need to develop a media anthropological approach and shed light on the cultural complexity of digital technologies while taking into account how users negotiate with digital surveillance and the quantification of the self.

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The Communication of Capital: Digital Media and the Logic of Acceleration

Cited by 21 publications

References 31 publications

Download the Entire Special Section Here

Download the Entire Special Section Here

From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism

BabyVeillance? Expecting Parents, Online Surveillance and the Cultural Specificity of Pregnancy Apps

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