A new economy (known as the network economy) has come to light which, with the lasting presence of new information technologies like the Internet, allows for a heightened receptivity towards innovation and productivity (Ampuja, 2016).
Where previously there would have been a greater reliance on scarce resources (such as physical capital, manual labour and access to land), this push for digital capitalism has brought forth a total paradigmatic shift in production, distribution and consumption with the deployment of cheap information, whereby knowledge and entrepreneurialism is highly valued and sought after (Ampuja, 2016); It has also moved to embody a system that is both non-hierarchical and participatory (Croeser, 2018).
While not completely a transition into an age of post-industrialism, because material goods are still being produced industrially, there has been a rather significant effect on how production is executed, with information technologies bringing about the facilitation of just-in-time production (Croeser, 2018)—a more streamlined manufacturing system that minimises on time, labour and materials (Bragg, 2021).
It is in—what is referred to by Manuel Castells as—“the spirit of informationalism” that grounds this next era of capitalism (Ampuja, 2016).
By mitigating the shortage of material resources, communications networks, of which run on their capacity to store a surplus of information, can thrive based on the commodification of its data and, through decentralising properties, generate more room for innovative ideation to take place.
Visionaries have since managed to creatively capitalise on this front by designing Internet-based platforms that can mediate this exchange to their advantage (Ampuja, 2016).
The Internet
As one of the most widely used (and easily accessed) information technologies, the Internet has rendered massive social, economical and political changes and has affected the means to which society as a whole consumes (Croeser, 2018).
Content, while readily available and aplenty, is not always free to everyone and is often privatised and monetized in order to make the most profit possible when distributing such information.
Despite this, the Internet has created spaces in which other types of information can spread freely, opening up communication channels for everyday users as well as activists who are, as a result, able to find ways to vocalise their beliefs through the process of networking (Croeser, 2018). In this sense, the online economy has become dialectical in nature (Croeser, 2018).
While there are numerous benefits to the Internet, it has also created complications when it comes to preserving personal freedom (Starr, 2019).
Due to unregulated private power, the current state of the digital economy has given rise to problems involving monopoly, surveillance, and disinformation, of which have yet to be fully resolved (Starr, 2019).
When considering media platforms, the substantial rise in monopolies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have led to privacy issues relating to the storing and tracking of personal information.
This phenomenon, which is referred to as a type of “surveillance capitalism”, sees big companies, tech or otherwise, collecting this data “for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales” (Zuboff, 2019).
D.N.A(I)
While D.N.A(I) may not be able to diminish the power that monopolies hold over netizen data, the company will, by no means, look to participate in this subculture of “surveillance capitalism”.
They are, however, a byproduct of the network economy and will therefore need to use the Internet above all other resources in order to become fully operable.
Seeing that D.N.A(I) feeds off of pre-existing data, all and any collection of user’s personal details will be linked to the salability of the service that is being provided and will not violate the subscribers’ privacy by misappropriating this information.
For subscribers, this service will include the registration of your musical preferences, data which is vital to our artificial intelligence programming in order to effectively craft songs that cater to your specifications. No labour would be required other than that of our A.I, George.
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References:
Ampuja, Marko. “The New Spirit of Capitalism, Innovation Fetishism and New Information
and Communication Technologies.” Javnost - The Public, vol. 23, no. 1, 2016, pp. 19–36., doi:10.1080/13183222.2016.1149765.
Bragg, Steven. “Just-in-Time Production Definition.” AccountingTools, AccountingTools, 16
Apr. 2021, www.accountingtools.com/articles/just-in-time-production.html. ‘
Castells, Manuel. “The Information City, the New Economy, and the Network Society.” The
Information Society Reader, 2020, pp. 150–164., doi:10.4324/9780203622278-17.
Croeser, Sky. “Post-Industrial and Digital Society.” The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism, by
Carl Levy and Matthew S. Adams, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 623–639.
Starr, Paul. “How Neoliberal Policy Shaped the Internet-and What to Do About It Now.” The
American Prospect, 2 Oct. 2019, prospect.org/power/how-neoliberal-policy-shaped-internet-surveillance-monopoly/.
Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: the Fight for the Future at the New
Frontier of Power. Profile Books, 2019.