The collection and analysis of data is changing the way economies operate. Are these changes so fundamental that they can be said to have led to the emergence of a new form of capitalism – surveillance capitalism? If people’s behaviour is made increasingly transparent, do we become a society in which trust is no longer necessary? Are individuals a mere appendage to the digital machine, objects of new mechanisms which reward and punish according to the determinations of private capital? How is social cohesion affected when people become dispensable as a labour force, while their data continues to provide function as a source of value in lucrative new markets that trade in predictions of human behaviour? How should we understand the new quality of power that arises from these unprecedented conditions? What kind of society does it aim to create? And what ramifications will these developments have for the principles of liberal democracy? Will privacy law and anti-trust law be enough? How can we tame what we do not yet understand?
Spendere, ma per fare il bene pubblico. Creando valore, e non sottraendolo alla collettività. Guardando al lungo periodo, e non all’immediato: perché gli strumenti per ripensare l’economia sono gli stessi capaci di produrre inclusività, giustizia sociale, attenzione alla diversità. In altre parole, una società migliore.
By Steven Gorelick, managing programs director at Local Futures (International Society for Ecology and Culture). He is the author of Small Is Beautiful, Big Is Subsidized (pdf), co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home, and co-director of the Economics of Happiness. His writings have been published in The Ecologist and Resurgence magazines.Originally published at the Economics of Happiness Blog
For all of its reach, Amazon, the company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1995 as an online bookstore, is still remarkably invisible. It makes it easy not to notice how powerful and wide-ranging it has become. But behind the packages on the doorstep and the inviting interface, Amazon has quietly positioned itself at the center of a growing share of our daily activities and transactions, extending its tentacles across our economy, and with it, our lives.
Can platform co-operativism generate better policy solutions? Co-ops have not played a transformational role in past decades. However, a new trend is emerging: often grassroots initiatives of young non-profit activists inventing new platform co-ops.
In that spirit, here are seven qualities that I consider essential to the identity of open source, contrasted with the diluted forms they commonly assume.
El pánico financiero y la austeridad que impone Alemania le reportan grandes beneficios y favorecen la apuesta de los grandes especuladores contra las deudas soberanas de los países del sur de Europa
Los de arriba pretenden que nos creamos que es normal que el 1% de la población posea el 43% de la riqueza mundial. Que asumamos que otro mundo no es posible. (por Olga Rodríguez)
The creators of Debtocracy, a documentary with two million views broadcasted from Japan to Latin America, analyze the shifting of state assets to private han...
Large banks’ trading advice to its well-heeled hedge-fund customers is a closely guarded secret on Wall Street. But a Goldman Sachs report sheds a rare light on this secretive world.
Contrary, to orthodox “win-win” theory, globalization is a highly asymmetrical phenomenon. Initially, it creates far more producers than consumers. It also results in extraordinary imbalances between nations with current account deficits and surpluses. And it has led to a widening disparity of the returns between labor and capital. Does this mean that globalization is inherently unsustainable? Probably not. But it does mean that the most destabilizing phase of this mega-trend could well be close at hand.