| Popis: |
“Data has been hailed as the new oil. The largest datasets are currently locked inside technological forms and business models within commodity chains. While there is a justified fear of governments’ uses of citizens’ data, it is currently poorly regulated and deployed solely as the means to private wealth through surplus value extraction.”, is claimed by Bilić, Prug and Žitko in the conclusion of their recently published "The Political Economy of Digital Monopolies: Contradictions and Alternatives to Data Commodification." Their book presents an attempt at mapping the economic power structure of the contemporary tech giants, subsumed under the acronym GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft). This is done in order to provide a systemic analysis of the seemingly immanent monopolistic nature of the very economic model under scrutiny. Furthermore, the authors formulate a Marxism-based critique of some of its basic structural traits, as well as critique of the wider social externalities of such economic model, while advocating for the democratic opening of the technological and economic field. This study present an insightful read for anyone interested in either contemporary debates within Marxian critique of political economy, or for scholars interested in the concrete empirical insights into the issues of production and circulation of commodities, but also issues regarding the possibilities of regulating the commodity chains in the context of the new digital and platform- based economy. |
