An earlier version of this article was presented to the Technology and Democracy project at CRASSH, Cambridge University, 29 September 2015. A footnoted copy is available at www.informationobservatory.info
Visit of Deng Xiaoping to Johnson Space Centre, 1979. - Great Images in NASA. Public Domain via Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.The International Monetary Fund warned last week that, nearly eight years after the global financial crisis, still-sluggish economic growth might combine with a new financial shock to tip the world back into recession. Meanwhile, however, investment in information and communications technologies – long venerated as a growth dynamo – remains high. How may we clarify this apparent contradiction?
The concept of “digital capitalism” may help. Great changes are ramifying around digital networks; at the same time, abiding political economic processes carry forward. I developed the idea of digital capitalism for this reason: a phase-change is occurring within capitalism.
