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CTheory Global Online Seminar on Critical Digital Studies
June 17, 1pm PDT (Pacific Daylight Time), 3pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) We have invited Michael Betancourt, author of a new CTheory article -- "Immaterial Value and Scarcity in Digital Capitalism," to present his work related to the future of digital capitalism. Commentaries will be provided by Arthur Kroker, co-author of Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class, and Simon Glezos, postdoctoral research fellow at the Pacific Center for Technology and Culture. We invite your participation in this global discussion of the contemporary economic crisis.
Theme: The common thread in the periodic, convulsive meltdown of contemporary capitalism is a radical transformation in the nature of capitalism itself, from material value to a future of immaterial value, from a history of financialization to the specter of automated trading systems seemingly beyond human control, from production to the illusion of "accumulation without production."
Circulating like a virus, the wild ride of digital capitalism brings whole continents to their financial knees: the housing bubble in the USA, the crisis of Euro-debt now, and incipient changes in China's economy next. No country is exempt, no individual untouched, no society unaffected, no empire immune. History is on the move once again, and digital capitalism is at once its talisman and casualty report.
Are we entering a new era of capitalism under the sign of "semiotic manipulation," run by software programs that quickly accident whole marketplaces, accelerated by the dream of accumulation without production, in essence, a new regime of affective capitalism driven forward by the regime of computation?
- Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Editors, CTheory
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