Tag: The Technological History of Digital Capitalism

  • The (creepy) spirit of digital capitalism

    This is an accusation which Jaron Lanier makes strongly on pg 134 of his recent Ten Reasons To Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Coming from someone who was less of an insider, it might seem like a rather shrill and slightly paranoid reading of the culture of digital elites. However I find it […]

  • CfP: Going Live: Exploring Live Digital Technologies and Live Streaming Practices

    For avoidance of doubt, CfPs I post in the ‘interested’ category of my blog are ones other people have organised which I’m archiving for my own use and sharing in case people are interested. If I’m organising an event or project, it’s in the ‘organising’ category of the blog.  *Going Live: Exploring Live Digital Technologies […]

  • Platform capitalism and the future of education

    In this week’s CPGJ platform capitalism reading group, we turn towards education for the first time with a paper by José van Dijck and Thomas Poell looking at the influence of social media platforms on education, particularly within schools. Much of the literature has addressed social media as tools, with varying interpretations offered about how these […]

  • Why would senior managers feel contemptuous of their expert staff?

    At various points in the last few months, I’ve seen the claim made that the senior management of universities hold their staff in contempt. A claim like this can’t help but be polemic and I’m not sure how helpful it would be to examine the particular cases if we’re interested in addressing the broader question: […]

  • Workshop: The Turn To AI in Content Moderation and Communication Governance

    Workshop: The turn to artificial intelligence in governing communication online 20.03.2018 | 9:00 – 18:00 ical | gcal Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Französische Straße 9, 10117 Berlin, Germany The technology underlying artificial intelligence research has increasingly found applications in the area of content moderation and communication governance on digital platforms. While the scale […]

  • The problem of abundance and the political economy of digital knowledge

    A conversation I had recently about the digitalisation of the archive left me thinking back to this section on pg 81-82 of World Without Mind by Franklin Foer: There have been various stabs at coining a term to capture the dominant role of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. Mark Zuckerberg has called his company a “utility,” perhaps un […]

  • The material interests of Big Tech

    In recent years, we have seen a renewed focus on the political ideologies which are currently emerging within Silicon Valley. Such considerations are not new and contemporary accounts are influenced, implicitly and explicitly, by earlier notions such as the Californian ideology. But the dominant approach appears to be a cultural one, treating these emerging political […]

  • CfP: Overcoming Inequalities in Internet Governance: framing digital policy capacity building strategies

    GIG-ARTS 2018 – The Second European Multidisciplinary Conference on Global Internet Governance Actors, Regulations, Transactions and Strategies 26-27 April 2018, Cardiff Overcoming Inequalities in Internet Governance: framing digital policy capacity building strategies Organised by: Centre for Internet and Global Politics / School of Law and Politics / Cardiff University In partnership with: DiploFoundation, The ECPR […]

  • Google’s next billion users

    I thought this was really interesting, particularly the focus on HCI for this strategy: *HCI/UX researchers at Google’s Next Billion Users teamThe Google Next Billion Users team is looking for HCI interns, post-docs, and researchers-on-contract to work on exploratory research and product initiatives. The team builds global products from the ground-up with new Internet users, […]

  • CFP: Alternative Social Media special issue of Social Media + Society

    After Social Media: Alternatives, New Beginnings, and Socialized Media ***Call for Proposals*** Editors: Fenwick McKelvey, Sean Lawson, and Robert W. Gehl The editors seeks 500 word abstracts for proposed articles for a special issue of Social Media + Society on “alternative social media.” The editors welcome proposals from scholars, practitioners, and activists from across disciplinary […]

  • Vested interests in ‘openness’

    To talk of ‘openness’ conveys a sense of lightness, gesturing towards a world without self-interested boundaries. In a world dichotomised in terms of open/closed, barriers are seen as obstacles to be surmounted in order that we might have free exchange. Overcoming these obstacles becomes a moral project, imbued with a sense of historical change: barriers […]

  • Why the left needs to reject the ideology of networked socialism

    In today’s Guardian, Neal Lawson offers a cautious reading of Corbyn’s Labour, accepting the ascendancy of the left within the party but urging it to look outwards. I’m sympathetic to many of the substantive points Lawson makes in the article but there’s a rich vein of problematic assumption running through their articulation which needs to […]

  • CFP: Platform Urbanism

    Association of American Geographers Conference 2018 New Orleans, USA, 10-14 April 2018 Organizers Susan Moore (University College London) Scott Rodgers (Birkbeck, University of London) Sponsors Digital Geographies Specialty Group Media and Communication Geography Specialty Group Urban Geography Speciality Group Outline Talk about ‘platforms’ is today all-pervasive: platform architecture, platform design, platform ecosystem, platform governance, platform […]

  • CFP: Storing and Sharing Special Issue of New Media & Society

    CALL FOR PROPOSALS ‘Storing and sharing: Everyday relationships with digital material’ Special Issue of New Media & Society Edited by Heather A. Horst (The University of Sydney, Australia), Jolynna Sinanan (RMIT University, Australia) and Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University, Australia) Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 November 2017 Proposal Selection Notification: 10 December 2017 Initial Article Submission Deadline: […]

  • The Ideal of the Digital Nomad

    In From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Fred Turner analyses how digital technology came to be seen as capable of liberating the individual, freeing them from the shackles of petty attachments to organisations and places. This is a complex story but it’s one in which cultural entrepreneurs figure prominently, carving out modes of living which later percolated […]

  • Conduits for variety

    In his superb From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Fred Turner vividly describes The Whole Earth Catalog and the horizon it opened up for many of its readers. From loc 1212: For many, the Catalog provided a first, and sometimes overwhelming, glimpse of the New Communalists’ intellectual world. Gareth Branwyn, for instance, a journalist who later wrote for Wired magazine, […]

  • The rhetoric and reality of user generated content 

    On pg 102 of Jonathan Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things, he highlights email exchanges between YouTube’s founders, released in a court case, which suggest the invocation of ‘user generated content’ might be a matter of branding rather than a meaningful growth strategy for social media platforms: In another email exchange from 2005, when full-length […]