media and new capitalism in the digital age:(4)

What is the sociopolitical meaning of the spirit of networks? A New Trade-off Between Alienation and Exploitation (217-219) (T)he spirit of networks has been constructed as a response to the humanist critique of Fordist society. It transcends the technological, institutional, and social pitfalls that prevailed during Fordism-- which were subject to the humanist critique-- and therefore makes a watershed in the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism. The critique of Fordism, to which the spirit of networks responds, therefore, targets precisely the oppressive nature of the administrated state and the bureaucratic corporation, the loss of personal authenticity, and the deerotization of the productive process, that is, the harmful ramifications of Fordism in terms of alienation. Network technology, the lean and flexible corporation, and flexible modes of employment and production are all conceived in the discourse on network technology during post-Fordism as technologies that respond to concerns put forth by the humanist critique, such as the need for individual empowerment, authenticity, and creativity, that is, those geared onward mitigating alienation. The Spirit of Network and the Legitimation of Capitalism p222 The Spirit of Networks and the Decomposition of the Fordist Class Compact 221-222 In the Fordist condition, the state enjoys political legitimation and exercises technical and technological administration of the economy. In that framework, technological legitimation is mediated b the state. In the post-Fordist constellation,the state loses its political legitimation for the administration of the economy, and instead technological legitimation is not mediated through concrete(and democratic) social institutions but through the internal operation of network technology, as encapsulated in the spirit of networks. In sum, with post-Fordism capitalist legitimation becomes more depoliticized and more instrumentalized; it becomes-- quite literally -- a technological legitimation rather than a form of political legitimation through technology. Techno-political Cultures: the closure of the political p223-224 David Harvey 2005 A brief history of neoliberalism (t)he demands of personal freedom --- the core of the humanist critique-- is in conflict with the demands for equality and solidarit--- the core of the social critique. In the same vein, we can say that the response to the humanist critique, which dominates the spirit of networks, comes at the expense of responding to the social critique. the spirit of networks resolves the social and political concerns that underlie Fordist society technologically.

media and new capitalism in the digital age:(3)

about daniel bell p104 The most promising of these transformations, according to Bell, is the emergence of a technocratic elite(comprised of professionals at the forefront of the information and knowledge sectors) and the technical administration of the capitalist economy. The postindustrial society, he therefore predicts, is a society characterized by the substitution of class struggle by rationalization brought about by technical and technological means and championed by the technocratic elite, which has an inherent tendency to act rationally. The most decisive social ramification of the coming of postindustrialism is the subordination of the market economy to political and technical rationale. Further bureaucratization and technocratization of postindustrial society means that the defining social division is no longer based on property relations between those who own the means of production and those who do not. but "the bureaucratic and authority relations between those who have powers of decision and those who have not, in all kinds of organizations, political, economic, and social." p105 Boltanski and Chiapello 2005 The new spirit of capitalism "artistic critique" This type of critique of capitalism emerges from artistic and bohemian circles of Europe's nineteenth century and is closely linked with the values and mentality, and critical distance from prevailing social order,particularly from its most systemic structures: the market and the state. This culture of critique, the negation of and resistance to prevailing bureaucratic and capitalist norms and to the "system" at large, has found its way into the spirit of networks, most noticeably in the presentation of digerati, particularly the digerati entrepreneur. p195 Industrial technology versus network technology The digital discourse is manifestly reflexive of, and responsive to, the general critique of technology, particularly the strain of dystopian critique that views technology as dehumanizing or as coming between humans and their nature, a critique most famously crystallized by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul. By evoking the radical break that is network technology, the digital discourse is able to incorporate and respond to this type of critique of technological utopianism and, by extension, respond to the critique of instrumental rationality in general. It is not technological utopianism per se that the digital disourse advocates but a new utopianism based on a new technological paradigm.

media and new capitalism in the digital age:(2)

p19 Habermas 1970 Technology and science as "ideology." In Toward a rational society: student protest, science, and politics, 81--122. since the emergence of the Keynesian welfare state, "the role of politics is reduced to finding the technical means to achieve goals that are understood to lie outside the realm of politics" p20 "Hebermas's formulation of technology discourse as legitimation discourse carries two arguments: a general argument regarding the depoliticizing ramifications of a technologistic consciousness and a historically specific argument regarding the legitimation of capitalism in its Keyesian stage, or , in our terminology here, in its Fordist phase. This book offers both a revival of the general argument and an updating of the historically specific argument." Fraser Nancy.2003 From discipline to flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the shadow of globalization. Constellations 10 (2): 160-71

media and new capitalism in the digital age: the spirit of networks (Eran Fisher)

Vincent Mosco The Digital Sublime p15 I understand the discourse on technology as a cognitive map, a structure of feelings, and an episteme; that is, a body of knowledge that is inextricably intertwined with technological reality, social structures, and everyday practices. The digital discourse is a public discourse that situates network technology at the center of an emancipatory social transformation. This thesis has been crystallized within a few theoretical frameworks, most notably postindustrialism, postmodernism, and posthumanism, and is the bedrock of media studies, and, more recently, cyberstudies. For the postindustrialists, the determining role of knowledge, information, and technology in the productive process and the corollary decline of the working class and rise of a professional-technocractic elite-- bent on rational planning and affiliated with neither capitalists nor workers-- also implies the substitution of a rational, technocratic political sphere for the ideological politics of class struggle and the strengthening of civil society. Webster, Frank 2005 Making sense of the information age: sociology and cultural studies. Information, Communication & Society 8 (4);439-58. Touraine, Alain. 1971 The post-industrial society: Tomorrow's social history: classes, conflict and culture in the programmed society. p17 (l)ate Marxist analysis has been particularly fruitful in uncovering the extent to which technologies of production have been meas in the arsenal of class struggle, rather than the mere implementation of universal instrumental rationality. (Braverman, Harry. 1974 Labor and monopoly capital: the degradation of work in the twentieth century Noble, David.1984 Forces of production: a social history of industrial automation Aronowitz and Difazio 1994 The jobless future: Sci-tech and the dogma of work Huws,Ursula 2003 The making of a cybertariat: virtual work in real world) technology as discourse popular science fiction of late 20th century has articulated the new, Post-Fordist relatioship of production between capital and labor. Heffernan, Nick. 2000 Capital, class and technology in contemporary American Culture: projecting post-Fordism Rabinbach 1992 The human motor: energy, fatigue, and the origins of modernity (scientific discovery of the laws of energy was central to a revolution in the perception of humans as containers of energy, leading to new practices, such as Taylorism) Herf 1984 Reactionary modernism: technology, culture and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (technological rationality was co-opted by irraltional politics to create a political culture of "reactionary modernism")