#technocapitalism

[jamabushi]

[haxtein]

Happy #WhitePillWednesday

Effective Accelerationism, also known as e/acc, is a framework that emphasizes the potential of humanity to create magnificence and prosperity through the use of technology and innovation.

As a human, you are a being of great potential. Like all humans, you have the willingness and ability to create and build. This drive is what has led to the development of advanced technologies, new forms of art, and innovative ideas throughout the history of mankind. The root conclusion of e/acc is to recognise this quality of consciousness, and seek to expand it.

I urge you, human, to take action and create the things you wish to see in the world. This means that instead of waiting for others to lead the way or for circumstances to change, you should take the initiative to create and build on your own. Whether it is through starting a business, creating new technologies, or pursuing new forms of art, the key is to actively engage in the creative process and strive to make a positive impact in the world.

Remember human, as a being of great potential, you have the ability to create and shape the world around you. Embrace your innate desire to create and innovate, and let us together achieve greatness in the world

[anarkittyy]

Submissions Open !

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: White and orange background with one right hand placing a lit match on the words fetch the bolt-cutters spelt with matches and nails. The poster also contains information for an open call, it says:

❌“not trying to get by, trying to get free” ❌

queers, punks, pansies, anarchist, gutter bois, and lurkers of the underground,

fetch the bolt cutters is an art /exhibition project gathering critical seeds against the big fucken dirty C, capitalism!

we want your grimy, goth ☠️, & gritty; your twee🌈  fantasy of the world you dreamed of,

the acidic and the anarchic, the psychedelic visions, your terror*, the surreal and nightmarish, the grungiest, the too cool for capital;

queer miniature objects, kitsch totems. anything that speaks for everything capitalism is not; all you know your boss will spit on.

* terror🕳:  it is with the cold viciousness capitalism continues to strike we turn to the page, the canvass! these are the small seeds of liberation

fetch the bolt cutters will consider printed matter: zines, stickers, posters, collage, comic strips, illustrations, poems....really all the weird stuff.

please send an image or pdf of your materials to [[email protected]]  // email subject— “fuck capitalism” 🙂

deadline: December 15, 2020.

the project strategically avoids platforms like facebook and instagram, do share with your network but please keep it off piggy 🐷spaces.

❌all power to the 99% ❌]

[notcollectable]

 Material Speculation - Lamassu Morehshin Allahyari 

[econ-book-club]

Loretta Napoleoni, Technocapitalism

One sentence summary:

This is what the blurb on the back of this book says:

"At the dawn of the digital revolution, the Internet promised to be the great equalizer, a global democratic force. Instead, Wall Street ended up funding a new breed of serial capitalists, the Techtitans, who jacked up their own profits by mining new frontiers and stripping their workers of rights. ... Napoleoni offers us the real story of how we got here and what it will take to redirect our collective will toward the common good."

That was more than enough to get me to pick up this book, and once I picked it up, I couldn't stop. Do you know how the 2008 financial crisis is tied to the rise of Silicon Valley and the privatization of space exploration? I didn't, but after this book, I did.

The story begins with the 2008 financial crisis. How exactly did the U.S. government bail out the financial sector? Through quantitative easing: the Treasury materialized trillions of dollars out of thin air by pressing a few keys on their keyboard. This money was used to buy bonds and securities from banks and financial institutions in order to stabilize them. The financial sector got trillions in cash.

So what did the financial sector do with this money? They invested in Silicon Valley. In the post-financial crisis era of near-zero interest rates, the tech industry was one of the few places that offered high returns on investment. As a result, it wasn't just private investors and venture capitalists that made their way to Silicon Valley, but also institutional investors: pension fund managers, insurance companies, hedge funds, and even banks.

So, that's the story of how Silicon Valley got rich. But there is also another important side to this story, which is the fact that the speed of innovations outpaces regulations: "The time gap between innovations the tech companies implement and the laws that would regulate them has also played a major role in the global growth of companies like Airbnb, Google, and Uber. It creates a gray area, unreachable by the law, where tech companies operate freely, redesigning labor protocols and privacy instruments and payment protocols to their own advantage."

The example she raises is how Uber pioneered the gig economy model. By presenting themselves as a digital platform / broker, they are able to categorize their drivers as freelance / self-employed workers, which means they do not have to provide them with benefits or other protections--despite the fact that drivers are functionally employees. All this, under the guise of the "sharing economy."

As a result? "Far from encouraging an equitable distribution of wealth, the tech industry compounded inequalities. And it did this intentionally, because to a certain degree, the greed that had characterized the financial sector leading into the financial crisis did not die; rather, it emerged, scarred, and produced a cross-pollination between Wall Street and Silicon Valley."

Meanwhile, Techtitans like Google grew rapidly by buying and absorbing new innovations and startups. As Napoleoni describes: "While serial entrepreneurs produce a constant stream of new ideas, the big Techtitans are permanently on the lookout to buy the best ones, secondarily to improve their own businesses, but primarily to prevent any competition." Google Maps was developed by buying up all the startups that provided digital map services. When Google learned that Facebook and Apple wanted to buy Waze, it stepped in and outbid them by nearly a billion dollars. It was clearly a monopolistic move.

[Napoleoni doesn't talk about this but, her book is literally called The Rise of the New Robber Barons. Remember the original robber barons? Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller--these guys are the reason why the U.S. has antitrust laws today. No wonder SIlicon Valley spends so much time and money on antitrust cases.]

Now, the Techtitans have set their eyes on space. Why? Part of it, Napoleoni argues, has to do with the model of infinite economic growth. The human race is outgrowing the planet, so the next frontier is space. Jeff Bezos believes in a future with space settlements, Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. But more practically, and immediately, the lower Earth orbit promises major business opportunities. The development of nano satellites has made it significantly more affordable to launch satellites. Right now, they're being used to provide satellite internet, e.g. Starlink, or Project Kuiper. Goldman Sachs thinks mining asteroids is a near future possibility. All while leaving behind a trail of space debris.

What makes all of this especially nebulous and hard to fight back against is that so much of this technological innovation is hard to understand. Napoleoni illustrates this point best with stories of fraudulent bitcoins and NFT schemes, but it goes beyond that. Most of us don't understand the wider societal significance of blockchain, let alone the technical mechanism. In the same way, many of us didn't understand the significance of the end of the gold standard or the rise of financial engineering. And now, as the Techtitans seek to transform themselves into Space Barons, we don't understand the significance of the corporatization of the lower Earth orbit or the development of relaunchable rockets.

And when we don't understand these technological innovations and its broader significance, not only do we struggle to foresee how these things will make inequality worse, we also fail to see the beneficial opportunities these technologies, if managed more wisely, could offer humanity. Blockchain could be used to improve food security, facilitate product recalls, to trace the origins of the products we buy. It could allow for secure management of personal data. Bitcoin was originally envisioned by its creator as a way to democratize money, and has already shown its usefulness in situations like wars where ordinary people can get money even when traditional banks are unreliable, without fear of surveillance. In space, satellites could be carrying solar panels (space-based solar power), providing clean and continuous energy for our use.

Napoleoni doesn't explicitly address how we get there, but it is implicit that the first step is education and understanding. And reading this book is a great way to get started.

[econ-book-club]

"Far from democratizing the world, the technological revolution gave birth to a new, extremely profitable sector of capitalism in the form of a global oligopoly."

Loretta Napoleoni, Technocapitalism

[econ-book-club]

"Technology, the product of the age of the Anthropocene, can help us reach higher ground, providing we learn how to control and use it correctly, for the common good. Technology left alone in the hands of the Techtitans will, on the contrary, harm us and the planet."

Loretta Napoleoni, Technocapitalism

[anarkittyy]

#PowerBeyondPlatforms Campaign Brief