How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism PDF Author: Cédric Durand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804294411
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The promise of the New Economy gone, we have regressed into the age of techno-feudalism The rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn’t deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever. In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination. How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is moving away from production to focus on predation.

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism PDF Author: Cédric Durand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804294411
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
The promise of the New Economy gone, we have regressed into the age of techno-feudalism The rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn’t deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever. In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination. How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is moving away from production to focus on predation.

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism

How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism PDF Author: Cédric Durand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804294403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn't deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever. In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination. How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is moving away from production to focus on predation.

The Rise, Decline and Renewal of Silicon Valley's High Technology Industry

The Rise, Decline and Renewal of Silicon Valley's High Technology Industry PDF Author: Dan Khanna
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351135899
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Originally published in 1997 this book examines the unique nature and characteristics of Silicon Valley and looks at the factors that led to the economic and competitiveness problems of the 1980s. The research concluded that the information revolution caused a complex set of events that had global ramifications. Silicon Valley was no longer operating as a driver of this revolution, but it was facing the onslaught of the global competitiveness it had unleashed.

Fictitious Capital

Fictitious Capital PDF Author: Cédric Durand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784787213
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
How finance is a mechanism of social and political domination The 2007–08 credit crisis and the long recession that followed brutally exposed the economic and social costs of financialization. Understanding what lay behind these events, the rise of “fictitious capital” and its opaque logic, is crucial to grasping the social and political conditions under which we live. Yet, for most people, the operations of the financial system remain shrouded in mystery. In this lucid and compelling book, economist Cédric Durand offers a concise and critical introduction to the world of finance, unveiling the truth behind the credit crunch. Fictitious Capital moves beyond moralizing tales about greedy bankers, short-sighted experts and compromised regulators to look at the big picture. Using comparative data covering the last four decades, Durand examines the relationship between trends such as the rise in private and public debt and the proliferation of financial products; norms such as our habitual assumptions about the production of value and financial stability; and the relationship of all this to political power. Fictitious Capital offers a stark warning about the direction that the international economy is taking. Durand argues that the accelerated expansion of financial operations is a sign of the declining power of the economies of the Global North. The City, Wall Street and other centres of the power of money, he suggests, may already be caked with the frosts of winter.

Abolish Silicon Valley

Abolish Silicon Valley PDF Author: Wendy Liu
Publisher: Repeater
ISBN: 1912248719
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, itÕs hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. ItÕs becoming clear that the tech industryÕs promised ÒinnovationÓ is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.

Quantum City

Quantum City PDF Author: Ayssar Arida
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0750650125
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Can a world view based on quantum theory produce a better approach to the problems of the city? Arida links the concepts of quantum theory to the field of urban design, encouraging the urban designer and architect to look at the design of cities from a new perspective.

Roadmap to a Brighter Future

Roadmap to a Brighter Future PDF Author: Paul A. Laudicina
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1953295649
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller America's best days should still lie ahead. Here’s the realistic and definitive path to get us there. The future doesn’t just happen. It’s a choice that we can and must help determine. But as our deeply divided nation reels from converging crises and seemingly intractable discord, where do we begin when the stakes are unfathomably high? With multiple possible futures before us, Americans need to understand the specific consequences of our immediate choices, seize the opportunity to renew the nation's promise, and set the stage to benefit current and future generations. If we chart our course correctly, we can emerge from our current troubles with a brighter future in reach of all Americans. Based on decades of expertise in envisioning and articulating policy options, Paul Laudicina lays out four vastly different visions for America's future. In Roadmap to a Brighter Future, he outlines why the best version of America will only come about if the correct actions are taken now—and outlines the ten steps needed to decisively tackle our most pervasive problems and address critical priorities. Laudicina, who led one of the world's most-respected management consultancies and has worked as a longtime senior advisor to Joe Biden, also integrates the uncensored views and fresh ideas of dozens of the world's leading thinkers, CEOs, scientists, government leaders, and innovators, to show why optimism about the United States is not only warranted, but crucial.

The Poetics of Digital Media

The Poetics of Digital Media PDF Author: Paul Frosh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509532684
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Media are poetic forces. They produce and reveal worlds, representing them to our senses and connecting them to our lives. While the poetic powers of media are perceptual, symbolic, social and technical, they are also profoundly moral and existential. They matter for how we reflect upon and act in a shared, everyday world of finite human existence. The Poetics of Digital Media explores the poetic work of media in digital culture. Developing an argument through close readings of overlooked or denigrated media objects – screenshots, tagging, selfies and more – the book reveals how media shape the taken-for-granted structures of our lives, and how they disclose our world through sudden moments of visibility and tangibility. Bringing us face to face with the conditions of our existence, it investigates how the ‘given’ world we inhabit is given through media. This book is important reading for students and scholars of media theory, philosophy of media, visual culture and media aesthetics.

Slavery Inc

Slavery Inc PDF Author: Lydia Cacho
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619023997
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, willfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade's hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism. This is an underground economy in which a sex slave can be bought for the price of a gun, but Cacho's powerful first-person interviews with mafiosi, pimps, prostitutes, and those who managed to escape from captivity makes it impossible to ignore the terrible human cost of this lucrative exchange. Shocking and sobering, Slavery Inc, is an exceptional book, both for the colossal scope of its enquiry, and for the tenacious bravery with which Cacho pursues the truth.

Don't Be Evil

Don't Be Evil PDF Author: Rana Foroohar
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 198482399X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A penetrating indictment of how today’s largest tech companies are hijacking our data, our livelihoods, our social fabric, and our minds—from an acclaimed Financial Times columnist and CNN analyst WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND EVENING STANDARD “Don’t be evil” was enshrined as Google’s original corporate mantra back in its early days, when the company’s cheerful logo still conveyed the utopian vision for a future in which technology would inevitably make the world better, safer, and more prosperous. Unfortunately, it’s been quite a while since Google, or the majority of the Big Tech companies, lived up to this founding philosophy. Today, the utopia they sought to create is looking more dystopian than ever: from digital surveillance and the loss of privacy to the spreading of misinformation and hate speech to predatory algorithms targeting the weak and vulnerable to products that have been engineered to manipulate our desires. How did we get here? How did these once-scrappy and idealistic enterprises become rapacious monopolies with the power to corrupt our elections, co-opt all our data, and control the largest single chunk of corporate wealth—while evading all semblance of regulation and taxes? In Don’t Be Evil, Financial Times global business columnist Rana Foroohar tells the story of how Big Tech lost its soul—and ate our lunch. Through her skilled reporting and unparalleled access—won through nearly thirty years covering business and technology—she shows the true extent to which behemoths like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon are monetizing both our data and our attention, without us seeing a penny of those exorbitant profits. Finally, Foroohar lays out a plan for how we can resist, by creating a framework that fosters innovation while also protecting us from the dark side of digital technology. Praise for Don’t Be Evil “At first sight, Don’t Be Evil looks like it’s doing for Google what muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell did for Standard Oil over a century ago. But this whip-smart, highly readable book’s scope turns out to be much broader. Worried about the monopolistic tendencies of big tech? The addictive apps on your iPhone? The role Facebook played in Donald Trump’s election? Foroohar will leave you even more worried, but a lot better informed.”—Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and author of The Square and the Tower