Digital Capitalism online course

I work as a software developer, and I have loved free and open source software for a long time, getting hooked on Linux at university. The antagonism towards proprietary software in the FLOSS world introduced me to an early notion of struggling against capitalism in a digital form. Back then the main protagonist was Microsoft.

Over time I came to understand libre software as an example of digital socialism. But I have also learned that there is more to digital capitalism than simply proprietary code. I was enthusiastic about Google at first, for example, as they embraced open source. Yet over time it became clear that you can still be at the commanding heights of digital capitalism while using and creating free software.

Similarly, I have been disappointed as the folksonomy of Web 2.0 has morphed into platform capitalism, and decentralised technologies and work have become enclosed (e.g. Git and Github).

In recent years I've been increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of digital technology - from the intense energy use of data centres, to the resource extraction and e-waste associated with digital products.

My biggest concerns with digital capitalism is its destructive impact on the environment and its exploitation of human labour.

Digital capitalism makes a huge contribution to environmental degradation and climate change. For example, the constant manufacture and upgrade cycle of the devices that power digital capitalism (from phones to computers to servers) requires a vast amount of mining of resources. The e-waste that comes out of the other end is the fastest growing waste stream. The endless growth of digitalisation also requires immense computational resources, which requires huge amounts of energy and water.

Digital capitalism also exploits people around the world. Labourers in mining and manufacturing are exploited mercilessly in the pursuit of profit. End-users of digital products are pushed to become addicted to their devices, to become hostile and polarised online, and to disengage from the civic sphere.

I believe that digital technologies can be truly liberatory, but only when the means of production are socialised and taken out of the hands of the monopolistic cabal of Big Tech firms.

I like the strategic framework suggested by James Muldoon in Platform Socialism. It has three main areas of action: Resist, Regulate, Recode. (Which seems to map very closely to working "Within the system, against the system, and beyond the system" as mentioned by Ulises in week 3's masterclass!)

Resistance is directly confronting Big Tech to create cracks in its structures. Tactically this might look like actions such as unionisation, strikes, protests, etc.

Regulation is seeking legal routes to rein in Big Tech. This may take the form of pushing for anti-monopoly legislation and interoperability legislation, for example.

Recoding is actively building alternative structures that provide another option for people to use. This could be developing things such as alternative software (e.g. Linux, Mastodon, LibreOffice, NextCloud, etc); and alternative organisational structures such as tech worker coops, etc.

I think all of this should be done with the strategic end goal of digital ecosocialism: socially-owned, democratically-governed ICT infrastructure rooted in the commons that is used to facilitate a socially equitable society that stays within planetary boundaries.

No, individual-focused regulations such as GDPR are not enough. They are a step in the right direction, as they begin to move the needle away from corporate ownership of our data. But they focus on individual data and individual consent, and do not cover aggregate data. As stated in the reading materials: "the pitfalls of such a logic is that it renders data into private property and obscures the structural crisis of data capitalism by reducing it to a “choice” to share/not share one’s own data." (https://digitalcapitalismcourse.tni.org/mod/book/view.php?id=32&chapterid=58)

Data regulations should also be pushing for public, collective ownership of our data. Initiatives such as data commons and data trusts should be supported.