Yu Hong
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040917
- eISBN:
- 9780252099434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040917.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book examines the genesis, mechanisms, and dynamics of forging a network-based economy in China during the crisis and the restructuring act that followed. Through historical analysis of the ...
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This book examines the genesis, mechanisms, and dynamics of forging a network-based economy in China during the crisis and the restructuring act that followed. Through historical analysis of the entire range of communications, from telecommunications to broadband, from wireless networks to digital media, it explores how the state, entangled with market forces and class interests, constructs and realigns its digitalized sector. It argues that corporatization, networking, and investment within the state-dominated realm of communications intensified after the 2008 global economic crisis, to overcome the contradictions generated by the old investment-and-export dependent growth model, on the one hand, and to enhance China’s techno-economic capacities in the renewed global competition for command, on the other. Despite the qualitative changes it brought in communications, this strategy achieved limited results for economic restructuring, because the ensuing spending binges paid little attention to social needs. Ultimately, this book historicizes and theorizes China’s state-led model of digital capitalism, which contends, collaborates, and overlaps with the U.S.-dominated system of global digital capitalism. It reveals so-called cyber nationalism or networked nationalism as neither monolithic nor guaranteed but contingent upon specific political-economic relations. It also predicts the future: While China’s embrace of communications is likely to accelerate the country’s global rise, it is not going to be a simple rise to power but a continual effort to tamp down crises and manage contradictions.Less
This book examines the genesis, mechanisms, and dynamics of forging a network-based economy in China during the crisis and the restructuring act that followed. Through historical analysis of the entire range of communications, from telecommunications to broadband, from wireless networks to digital media, it explores how the state, entangled with market forces and class interests, constructs and realigns its digitalized sector. It argues that corporatization, networking, and investment within the state-dominated realm of communications intensified after the 2008 global economic crisis, to overcome the contradictions generated by the old investment-and-export dependent growth model, on the one hand, and to enhance China’s techno-economic capacities in the renewed global competition for command, on the other. Despite the qualitative changes it brought in communications, this strategy achieved limited results for economic restructuring, because the ensuing spending binges paid little attention to social needs. Ultimately, this book historicizes and theorizes China’s state-led model of digital capitalism, which contends, collaborates, and overlaps with the U.S.-dominated system of global digital capitalism. It reveals so-called cyber nationalism or networked nationalism as neither monolithic nor guaranteed but contingent upon specific political-economic relations. It also predicts the future: While China’s embrace of communications is likely to accelerate the country’s global rise, it is not going to be a simple rise to power but a continual effort to tamp down crises and manage contradictions.
Moritz Altenried
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226815497
- eISBN:
- 9780226815503
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226815503.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Science, Technology and Environment
The digital factory takes very different forms – it might be a platform, a video game, or a distribution center – but digital technology produces labor regimes that often show surprising continuities ...
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The digital factory takes very different forms – it might be a platform, a video game, or a distribution center – but digital technology produces labor regimes that often show surprising continuities with classical factories just as well as novel configurations. The guiding thread of the book is to think about these continuities, reconfigurations, and new forms of the factory. From this angle, the book investigates the transformation of labor in digital capitalism. Combining a number of empirical studies into a narrative and conceptual framework, the book offers a fresh theoretical perspective on labor in the algorithmic world of digital capitalism. These areas of work are often hidden behind the supposed magic of algorithms, thought to be automated but in fact still highly dependent on human labor. Workers in German Amazon warehouses in tandem with workers on global digital labor platforms training artificial intelligence, delivery drivers in the gig economy, Chinese gaming workers, Filipino content moderators for platforms like Facebook, Google’s book scanning workers in California: these are the workers of today’s digital factory. Rooted in sociology, labor geography, anthropology, and media and cultural studies, The Digital Factory: The Human Labor of Automation is based on more than seven years of research in different sites. Using a range of qualitative methods including ethnographic approaches and interviews as well as software and infrastructure studies, the book offers profound insights into different workplaces, infrastructures, platforms, labor regimes, and struggles playing out across the digital factory.Less
The digital factory takes very different forms – it might be a platform, a video game, or a distribution center – but digital technology produces labor regimes that often show surprising continuities with classical factories just as well as novel configurations. The guiding thread of the book is to think about these continuities, reconfigurations, and new forms of the factory. From this angle, the book investigates the transformation of labor in digital capitalism. Combining a number of empirical studies into a narrative and conceptual framework, the book offers a fresh theoretical perspective on labor in the algorithmic world of digital capitalism. These areas of work are often hidden behind the supposed magic of algorithms, thought to be automated but in fact still highly dependent on human labor. Workers in German Amazon warehouses in tandem with workers on global digital labor platforms training artificial intelligence, delivery drivers in the gig economy, Chinese gaming workers, Filipino content moderators for platforms like Facebook, Google’s book scanning workers in California: these are the workers of today’s digital factory. Rooted in sociology, labor geography, anthropology, and media and cultural studies, The Digital Factory: The Human Labor of Automation is based on more than seven years of research in different sites. Using a range of qualitative methods including ethnographic approaches and interviews as well as software and infrastructure studies, the book offers profound insights into different workplaces, infrastructures, platforms, labor regimes, and struggles playing out across the digital factory.
Yu Hong
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040917
- eISBN:
- 9780252099434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040917.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter introduces the post-2008 historical context of crisis and restructuring, where communications have become a new epicenter of political-economy transformation and a crosscutting tool for ...
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This chapter introduces the post-2008 historical context of crisis and restructuring, where communications have become a new epicenter of political-economy transformation and a crosscutting tool for economic recovery and industrial upgrades. It also introduces the themes of this book, that is, the centrality of communications to Chinese-style capitalism, the state’s constitutive role in the evolving networked economy, and, lastly, the relationship between the state-dominated communications system and the global digital economy.Less
This chapter introduces the post-2008 historical context of crisis and restructuring, where communications have become a new epicenter of political-economy transformation and a crosscutting tool for economic recovery and industrial upgrades. It also introduces the themes of this book, that is, the centrality of communications to Chinese-style capitalism, the state’s constitutive role in the evolving networked economy, and, lastly, the relationship between the state-dominated communications system and the global digital economy.
John Michael Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781447308225
- eISBN:
- 9781447311911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447308225.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
This chapter critically explores a common perspective that insists we have moved towards a qualitatively distinctive form of global capitalism based in new media and financial networks. While ...
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This chapter critically explores a common perspective that insists we have moved towards a qualitatively distinctive form of global capitalism based in new media and financial networks. While containing many positive insights, this perspective nevertheless constructs an untenable division between what is seen to be older ‘industrial’ forms of capital and contemporary digital and financial forms of capital. By drawing on Marxism, the chapter outlines problems on this perspective and shows that in reality capitalism is still driven by the need to exploit labour through a financial and neoliberal agenda.Less
This chapter critically explores a common perspective that insists we have moved towards a qualitatively distinctive form of global capitalism based in new media and financial networks. While containing many positive insights, this perspective nevertheless constructs an untenable division between what is seen to be older ‘industrial’ forms of capital and contemporary digital and financial forms of capital. By drawing on Marxism, the chapter outlines problems on this perspective and shows that in reality capitalism is still driven by the need to exploit labour through a financial and neoliberal agenda.
Mohammad Amir Anwar and Mark Graham
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- February 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780198840800
- eISBN:
- 9780191876455
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198840800.003.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Big hopes about African development are pinned on the digital economy activities, ranging from employment generation to reduction of poverty and inequality. In the context of widespread joblessness ...
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Big hopes about African development are pinned on the digital economy activities, ranging from employment generation to reduction of poverty and inequality. In the context of widespread joblessness on the continent, young African workers—who are often highly educated—are turning to the new job opportunities (e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning, call centre work, a range of gig work) presented by an emerging information-based economy not necessarily out of choice but necessity. Therefore, the core question of the book is as follows. How are these new digital economy activities influencing African workers’ lives and livelihoods? This chapter outlines the book’s theoretical and conceptual scope, the geographical context of the research behind it, its key contributions, and core arguments.Less
Big hopes about African development are pinned on the digital economy activities, ranging from employment generation to reduction of poverty and inequality. In the context of widespread joblessness on the continent, young African workers—who are often highly educated—are turning to the new job opportunities (e.g. artificial intelligence and machine learning, call centre work, a range of gig work) presented by an emerging information-based economy not necessarily out of choice but necessity. Therefore, the core question of the book is as follows. How are these new digital economy activities influencing African workers’ lives and livelihoods? This chapter outlines the book’s theoretical and conceptual scope, the geographical context of the research behind it, its key contributions, and core arguments.
Dan Schiller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038761
- eISBN:
- 9780252096716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0016
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This book explores the notion of digital capitalism and its crash in 2007–2008, which it attributes to the uneven character of information and communications technology (ICT). It advances two main ...
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This book explores the notion of digital capitalism and its crash in 2007–2008, which it attributes to the uneven character of information and communications technology (ICT). It advances two main arguments: that the economic contributions made by ICT to digital capitalism rendered digital technology a fundamental pole of growth; and that, when it arrived, the economic crisis could be traced not only to financial speculation but to capital's multifaceted integration of digital systems into the political economy. In this account, the contradictory matrix of technological revolution and stagnation that constitutes capitalism today is highlighted. The book also elucidates the role of information and communications in the political economy's chief developmental processes, including capital's reorganization of the system of production, through fresh cycles of labor restructuring and spiking foreign direct investment; capital's concurrent ingress into finance; escalating military procurement spending; and the wide-ranging changes in the ICT sector. Finally, it considers how commodity chains bring together diverse labor systems to effect globally distributed production processes.Less
This book explores the notion of digital capitalism and its crash in 2007–2008, which it attributes to the uneven character of information and communications technology (ICT). It advances two main arguments: that the economic contributions made by ICT to digital capitalism rendered digital technology a fundamental pole of growth; and that, when it arrived, the economic crisis could be traced not only to financial speculation but to capital's multifaceted integration of digital systems into the political economy. In this account, the contradictory matrix of technological revolution and stagnation that constitutes capitalism today is highlighted. The book also elucidates the role of information and communications in the political economy's chief developmental processes, including capital's reorganization of the system of production, through fresh cycles of labor restructuring and spiking foreign direct investment; capital's concurrent ingress into finance; escalating military procurement spending; and the wide-ranging changes in the ICT sector. Finally, it considers how commodity chains bring together diverse labor systems to effect globally distributed production processes.
James H. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226774350
- eISBN:
- 9780226816050
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226816050.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
The digital devices that seem to define our era exist not only because of the innovations of figures in Silicon Valley but because of the extraction of dense, artisanally mined substances like ...
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The digital devices that seem to define our era exist not only because of the innovations of figures in Silicon Valley but because of the extraction of dense, artisanally mined substances like tantalum, tin, and tungsten (referred to by the “international community” as the “3 Ts”). In the tentatively postwar eastern DR Congo, where dispossession has reoriented many people’s lives around artisanal mining, these minerals are socially dense, fueling movement and innovative collaborations that encompass diverse actors, geographies, temporalities, and dimensions. Focusing on the miners and traders of some of these digital minerals, The Eyes of the World examines how eastern Congolese involved in this business understand the world in which they are engaged, the forces pitted against them, and the complicated process through which substances in the earth and forest are converted into commodified resources. Smith shows how violent dispossession has informed a bottom-up social theory that valorizes movement and collaboration—one that directly confronts both private mining companies and the tracking initiatives implemented by international NGOs and companies aspiring to ensure that the minerals in digital devices are purified of blood.Less
The digital devices that seem to define our era exist not only because of the innovations of figures in Silicon Valley but because of the extraction of dense, artisanally mined substances like tantalum, tin, and tungsten (referred to by the “international community” as the “3 Ts”). In the tentatively postwar eastern DR Congo, where dispossession has reoriented many people’s lives around artisanal mining, these minerals are socially dense, fueling movement and innovative collaborations that encompass diverse actors, geographies, temporalities, and dimensions. Focusing on the miners and traders of some of these digital minerals, The Eyes of the World examines how eastern Congolese involved in this business understand the world in which they are engaged, the forces pitted against them, and the complicated process through which substances in the earth and forest are converted into commodified resources. Smith shows how violent dispossession has informed a bottom-up social theory that valorizes movement and collaboration—one that directly confronts both private mining companies and the tracking initiatives implemented by international NGOs and companies aspiring to ensure that the minerals in digital devices are purified of blood.
Dan Schiller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038761
- eISBN:
- 9780252096716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0015
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines some of the larger forces that propelled digital capitalism into what was evidently a fraught future. It first considers how the historical movement of the political economy is ...
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This chapter examines some of the larger forces that propelled digital capitalism into what was evidently a fraught future. It first considers how the historical movement of the political economy is shaped both within and beyond a top-down, state-oriented geopolitics before discussing how the onset of the digital depression brought changes to the interstate system, indicative of altering political–economic relations. It then describes attempts by numerous states to multilateralize control of U.S.-centric internet in relation to structural changes in the interstate system and to competing efforts to regenerate the political economy in ways that might capture an outsized share of overall profits for specific units of capital and particular fractions of the capitalist class. It also explains the concept of accumulation by dispossession and concludes with suggestions for resolving the digital depression on terms favorable to capital.Less
This chapter examines some of the larger forces that propelled digital capitalism into what was evidently a fraught future. It first considers how the historical movement of the political economy is shaped both within and beyond a top-down, state-oriented geopolitics before discussing how the onset of the digital depression brought changes to the interstate system, indicative of altering political–economic relations. It then describes attempts by numerous states to multilateralize control of U.S.-centric internet in relation to structural changes in the interstate system and to competing efforts to regenerate the political economy in ways that might capture an outsized share of overall profits for specific units of capital and particular fractions of the capitalist class. It also explains the concept of accumulation by dispossession and concludes with suggestions for resolving the digital depression on terms favorable to capital.
Dan Schiller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038761
- eISBN:
- 9780252096716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines how networked financialization exacerbated capitalism's crisis tendencies. Financialization, a formative aspect of the rise of digital capitalism in response to the crisis of ...
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This chapter examines how networked financialization exacerbated capitalism's crisis tendencies. Financialization, a formative aspect of the rise of digital capitalism in response to the crisis of the 1970s, evolved out of multiple impulses. One spur came as millions of workers who experienced wage repression were brought to depend on debt for immediate consumption as well as for housing and automobiles, education, and medical care. Another came from the fact that finance grew ever larger in the strategies of transnational manufacturers, retail chains, agribusinesses, and service suppliers. The chapter also discusses the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on financialization as well as the role of networks in the emergence of a high-tech financial system. It concludes by looking at three major trends, including the possibility that the financial crisis was unlikely to end without a profoundly conflicted restructuring of the global political economy.Less
This chapter examines how networked financialization exacerbated capitalism's crisis tendencies. Financialization, a formative aspect of the rise of digital capitalism in response to the crisis of the 1970s, evolved out of multiple impulses. One spur came as millions of workers who experienced wage repression were brought to depend on debt for immediate consumption as well as for housing and automobiles, education, and medical care. Another came from the fact that finance grew ever larger in the strategies of transnational manufacturers, retail chains, agribusinesses, and service suppliers. The chapter also discusses the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on financialization as well as the role of networks in the emergence of a high-tech financial system. It concludes by looking at three major trends, including the possibility that the financial crisis was unlikely to end without a profoundly conflicted restructuring of the global political economy.
Fabian Braesemann
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- February 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780198840800
- eISBN:
- 9780191876455
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198840800.003.0003
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Workers perform a diverse range of digital economy activities both in BPOs and on platforms. This chapter provides a snapshot of how and where these diverse work activities get done in Africa, ...
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Workers perform a diverse range of digital economy activities both in BPOs and on platforms. This chapter provides a snapshot of how and where these diverse work activities get done in Africa, showing that African workers remain very much a part of contemporary digital capitalism. They perform a wide range of digital work activities from diverse locations—from an office block in the centre of a lively metropolis, to a makeshift room in a town recovering from civil war, as well as a multitude of bedrooms, cafes, and libraries across the continent. In summary, this chapter offers a visual and descriptive outline of the various types of digital activities being performed in newer spaces that are connecting to the global information economy. In doing so, it asks what types of work get done in Africa, and what that means for value creation and capture.Less
Workers perform a diverse range of digital economy activities both in BPOs and on platforms. This chapter provides a snapshot of how and where these diverse work activities get done in Africa, showing that African workers remain very much a part of contemporary digital capitalism. They perform a wide range of digital work activities from diverse locations—from an office block in the centre of a lively metropolis, to a makeshift room in a town recovering from civil war, as well as a multitude of bedrooms, cafes, and libraries across the continent. In summary, this chapter offers a visual and descriptive outline of the various types of digital activities being performed in newer spaces that are connecting to the global information economy. In doing so, it asks what types of work get done in Africa, and what that means for value creation and capture.
Florian Schneider
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190876791
- eISBN:
- 9780190876838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190876791.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Economy, International Relations and Politics
The concluding chapter of China’s Digital Nationalism retraces the central findings and arguments of the book. It first summarizes how digital discourses are managed in China today, and it then asks ...
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The concluding chapter of China’s Digital Nationalism retraces the central findings and arguments of the book. It first summarizes how digital discourses are managed in China today, and it then asks what implications digital nationalism has for the PRC and its regional relations. Following this discussion on East Asia, the chapter turns to more general findings about imagined communities and networked societies, and it summarizes how nationalism changes in a time of ubiquitous digital media use. Finally, the chapter concludes with a personal, normative assessment, which is that without serious rethinking on the part of policy-makers, information gate-keepers, tech innovators, and information and communication technology users, the twenty-first century is bound to again be a century of nations and nationalism, now filtered through the networks of neoliberal digital capitalism. Without intervention, this will be a parochial world, ultimately ill-equipped to handle the daunting challenges humanity faces today.Less
The concluding chapter of China’s Digital Nationalism retraces the central findings and arguments of the book. It first summarizes how digital discourses are managed in China today, and it then asks what implications digital nationalism has for the PRC and its regional relations. Following this discussion on East Asia, the chapter turns to more general findings about imagined communities and networked societies, and it summarizes how nationalism changes in a time of ubiquitous digital media use. Finally, the chapter concludes with a personal, normative assessment, which is that without serious rethinking on the part of policy-makers, information gate-keepers, tech innovators, and information and communication technology users, the twenty-first century is bound to again be a century of nations and nationalism, now filtered through the networks of neoliberal digital capitalism. Without intervention, this will be a parochial world, ultimately ill-equipped to handle the daunting challenges humanity faces today.
Dan Schiller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038761
- eISBN:
- 9780252096716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines the rise of networked militarization in the United States. It considers how increased spending for U.S. military procurement sparked a shift into networks in capitalist ...
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This chapter examines the rise of networked militarization in the United States. It considers how increased spending for U.S. military procurement sparked a shift into networks in capitalist development, casting digital capitalism as a permanent, pervasively militarized social formation. It shows that, throughout every presidency from the Truman administration to Ronald Reagan and beyond, the United States did its best to capture and to reorganize the frontiers of the world political economy to serve capital's short- and/or long-term designs. It argues that a militarized digital capitalism carried forward capital's longstanding structural reliance on government spending, extending and reorienting it. Finally, it describes how massive and compounding investments in computer networks became a marked feature across the length and breadth of the political economy.Less
This chapter examines the rise of networked militarization in the United States. It considers how increased spending for U.S. military procurement sparked a shift into networks in capitalist development, casting digital capitalism as a permanent, pervasively militarized social formation. It shows that, throughout every presidency from the Truman administration to Ronald Reagan and beyond, the United States did its best to capture and to reorganize the frontiers of the world political economy to serve capital's short- and/or long-term designs. It argues that a militarized digital capitalism carried forward capital's longstanding structural reliance on government spending, extending and reorienting it. Finally, it describes how massive and compounding investments in computer networks became a marked feature across the length and breadth of the political economy.
Dan Schiller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038761
- eISBN:
- 9780252096716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines whether the metamorphosis of communications around internet commodity chains contributed to economic growth or led to a further episode of crisis. More specifically, it ...
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This chapter examines whether the metamorphosis of communications around internet commodity chains contributed to economic growth or led to a further episode of crisis. More specifically, it considers whether the U.S. information and communications industry, which invested more in information and communications technology (ICT) and software than any other sector including banking and manufacturing, signified that a basis was being laid for market expansion and economic growth. It also discusses whether investment in Web communications commodity chains siphoned revenue and profit mostly from old to new media, so that growth overall remained flat. Finally, it highlights shifts in the territorial profile of communications markets that reflected the ongoing and unfinished historical mutation into digital capitalism.Less
This chapter examines whether the metamorphosis of communications around internet commodity chains contributed to economic growth or led to a further episode of crisis. More specifically, it considers whether the U.S. information and communications industry, which invested more in information and communications technology (ICT) and software than any other sector including banking and manufacturing, signified that a basis was being laid for market expansion and economic growth. It also discusses whether investment in Web communications commodity chains siphoned revenue and profit mostly from old to new media, so that growth overall remained flat. Finally, it highlights shifts in the territorial profile of communications markets that reflected the ongoing and unfinished historical mutation into digital capitalism.
Dan Schiller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038761
- eISBN:
- 9780252096716
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter examines recent historical trends to better understand how the massive restructuring of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector sparked a shift into networks in ...
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This chapter examines recent historical trends to better understand how the massive restructuring of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector sparked a shift into networks in capitalist development. Profound technical and institutional changes in the ICT industry, which lies at the epicenter of an emerging digital capitalism, caused commodity chains that had seemed stable to buckle and recompose. The result was not uniform growth but ragged unevenness: expansionary dynamism alongside devastation. This chapter discusses how communications and information processing became the largest sectoral source of demand for ICTs and whether this major axis of change around computer networks revived the growth prospects of the wider political economy. It also considers a series of developments that radically enlarged the interoperable internet during the late 1980s and 1990s.Less
This chapter examines recent historical trends to better understand how the massive restructuring of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector sparked a shift into networks in capitalist development. Profound technical and institutional changes in the ICT industry, which lies at the epicenter of an emerging digital capitalism, caused commodity chains that had seemed stable to buckle and recompose. The result was not uniform growth but ragged unevenness: expansionary dynamism alongside devastation. This chapter discusses how communications and information processing became the largest sectoral source of demand for ICTs and whether this major axis of change around computer networks revived the growth prospects of the wider political economy. It also considers a series of developments that radically enlarged the interoperable internet during the late 1980s and 1990s.
Florian Schneider
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190876791
- eISBN:
- 9780190876838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190876791.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Economy, International Relations and Politics
Chapter 6 examines the East China Sea dispute on China’s web. This includes an analysis of the official Chinese Diaoyu Islands website, but also of various military news portals and the web presence ...
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Chapter 6 examines the East China Sea dispute on China’s web. This includes an analysis of the official Chinese Diaoyu Islands website, but also of various military news portals and the web presence of non-governmental advocacy groups. While the issue is more dynamic, and notably involves more commercial actors, than the Nanjing Massacre case of the previous chapter, Chinese sites nevertheless fall back on traditional mass-media scripts. The analysis also reveals how this nationalist topic ‘sells’ in digital China: the prominent web resources make heavy use of advertising pop-ups and click-bait, and they juxtapose nationalist imagery with violence, pornography, and gambling offers. The chapter argues that, on China’s web, the issue of the East China Sea dispute is governed by a tacit consensus between political and commercial actors to commodify nationalist symbols for consumption by a specific target demographic, and that this practice shifts Sino–Japan discourses into chauvinistic directions.Less
Chapter 6 examines the East China Sea dispute on China’s web. This includes an analysis of the official Chinese Diaoyu Islands website, but also of various military news portals and the web presence of non-governmental advocacy groups. While the issue is more dynamic, and notably involves more commercial actors, than the Nanjing Massacre case of the previous chapter, Chinese sites nevertheless fall back on traditional mass-media scripts. The analysis also reveals how this nationalist topic ‘sells’ in digital China: the prominent web resources make heavy use of advertising pop-ups and click-bait, and they juxtapose nationalist imagery with violence, pornography, and gambling offers. The chapter argues that, on China’s web, the issue of the East China Sea dispute is governed by a tacit consensus between political and commercial actors to commodify nationalist symbols for consumption by a specific target demographic, and that this practice shifts Sino–Japan discourses into chauvinistic directions.