Elon Musk had good reasons to feel unfulfilled enough to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He had pioneered online payments, upended the car industry, revolutionized space travel, and even experimented with ambitious brain-computer interfaces. His cutting-edge technological feats had made him the world’s richest entrepreneur. Alas, neither his achievements nor his wealth granted him entry into the new ruling class of those harnessing the powers of cloud-based capital. Twitter offers Musk a chance to make amends.
Since capitalism’s dawn, power stemmed from owning capital goods; steam engines, Bessemer furnaces, industrial robots, and so on. Today, it is cloud-based capital, or cloud capital in short, that grants its owners hitherto unimaginable powers.
Consider Amazon, with its network of software, hardware, and warehouses – and its Alexa device sitting on our kitchen counter interfacing directly with us. It constitutes a cloud-based system capable of probing our emotions more deeply than any advertiser ever could. Its tailor-made experiences exploit our biases to produce responses. Then, it produces its own responses to our responses – to which we respond again, training the reinforcement-learning algorithms, which trigger another ripple of responses.
Unlike old-fashioned terrestrial or analogue capital, which boils down to produced means of manufacturing things consumers want, cloud capital functions as a produced means of modifying our behavior in line with its owners’ interests. The same algorithm running on the same labyrinth of server farms, optic fiber cables, and cell-phone towers performs multiple simultaneous miracles.
Cloud capital’s first miracle is to get us to work for free to replenish and enhance its stock and productivity with every text, review, photo, or video that we create and upload using its interfaces. In this manner, cloud capital has turned hundreds of millions of us into cloud-serfs – unpaid producers, toiling the landlords’ digital estates and believing, like peasants believed under feudalism, that our labor (creating and sharing our photos and opinions) is part of our character.
The second miracle is cloud capital’s capacity to sell to us the object of the desires it has helped instill in us. Amazon, Alibaba, and their many e-commerce imitators in every country may look to the untrained eye like monopolized markets, but they are nothing like a market – not even a hyper-capitalist digital market. Even in markets that are cornered by a single firm or person, people can interact reasonably freely. In contrast, once you enter a platform like Amazon, the algorithm isolates you from every other buyer and feeds you exclusively the information its owners want you to have.
Buyers cannot talk to each other, form associations, or otherwise organize to force a seller to reduce a price or improve quality. Sellers, too, are in a one-to-one relation with the algorithm and must pay its owner to complete a trade. Everything and everyone is intermediated not by the disinterested invisible hand of the market but by an invisible algorithm that works for one person, or one company, in what is, essentially, a cloud-fief.
Musk is perhaps the only tech lord who had been watching the triumphant march of this new techno-feudalism helplessly from the sidelines. His Tesla car company uses the cloud cleverly to turn its cars into nodes on a digital network that generates big data and ties drivers to Musk’s systems. His SpaceX rocket company, and its flock of low-orbit satellites now littering our planet’s periphery, contributes significantly to the development of other moguls’ cloud capital.
But Musk? Frustratingly for the business world’s enfant terrible, he lacked a gateway to the gigantic rewards cloud capital can furnish. Until now: Twitter could be that missing gateway.
Immediately after taking over and pronouncing himself Chief Twit, Musk affirmed his commitment to safeguarding Twitter as the “public square” where anything and everything is debated. It was a smart tactic which successfully diverted the public’s attention to an endless global debate about whether the world should trust its foremost short-form forum to a mogul with a history of playing fast and loose with the truth in that same forum.
The liberal commentariat is fretting over Donald Trump’s reinstatement. The left is agonizing over the rise of a tech-savvy version of Rupert Murdoch. Decent people of all views are deploring the terrible treatment of Twitter’s employees. And Musk? He seems to be keeping his eye on the ball: In a revealing tweet, he confessed his ambition to turn Twitter into an “everything app.”
An “everything app” is, in my definition, nothing less than a gateway into cloud capital that allows its owner to modify consumer behavior, to extract free labor from users turned into cloud serfs, and, last but not least, to charge vendors a form of cloud rent to sell their wares. So far, Musk has not owned anything capable of evolving into an “everything app” and had no way of creating one from scratch.
For while he was busy working out how to make mass-produced electric cars desirable and to profit from conquering outer space, Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Facebook, and Tencent’s WeChat were wrapping their tentacles firmly around platforms and interfaces with “everything app” potential. Only one such interface was available for purchase.
Musk’s challenge now is to enhance Twitter’s own cloud capital and hook it up to his existing Big Data network, while constantly enriching that network with data collected by Tesla cars crisscrossing Earth’s roads and countless satellites crisscrossing its skies. Assuming he can steady the nerves of Twitter’s remaining workforce, his next task will be to eliminate bots and weed out trolls so that New Twitter knows, and owns, its users’ identities.
In a letter to advertisers, Musk correctly noted that irrelevant ads are spam, but relevant ones are content. In these techno-feudal times, this means that messages unable to modify behavior are spam, but those that sway what people think and do are the only content that matters: true power.
As a private fief, Twitter could never be the world’s public square. That was never the point. The pertinent question is whether it will grant its new owner secure membership in the new techno-feudal ruling class.
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4 Comments
Actually, one other thing,
When Yanis pronounces that what Musk did by declaring the twitter-sphere (or whatever it bloody is) a public square for debate was a “smart tactic”, one, he gives the guy too much credit, because what else is he gonna say? Really? Like “I’m gonna use it for evil instead of good”? And two, he’s treating the public a little unfairly. The public is a pretty big body of people with a range of views and thoughts about shit and people. I would hazard a guess Musk, apart from being a rather neither here nor there scent, he has a lot of supporters but a lot of haters who just see him as a lunatic with too much money who wants off the earth. But most people, like their attitude to most capitalists and those with huge amounts of money, probably just think he’s a dick, but what can they do about it. In the end capitalists just want to make more money, and at the least not lose what they already have. Then there’s dark money that has democracy in chains as Nancy McClean says in her very important book, Democracy in Chains (sorry channeling Paul Street). That’s all Yanis is really saying. So what’s new? Go tell all the millions living in favelas, in worker dorms in China who never get paid for months, those shipped in from the Philippines and elsewhere to do all the shit work in the Mid East and elsewhere, that rich assholes like Musk are screwing them over cleverly and stealthily with their techno-feudal plans. They’d just say, yeah whatever, what’s new?
The “public” is not really just “the public”. But intellectuals like to think they have insights the public doesn’t see, won’t see, can’t see, or feel, or kind of just intuitively know (like looking at a number and trying guess if it’s a prime…you’d be surprised…or as Roger Penrose suggests about our trust, a kind of intuitive belief, in certain theorems or maths and outcomes that algorithms just can’t have that goes beyond Gödel’s incompleteness theorem) …and have their backs. I’d hazard a guess much of the public just knows democracy is in chains, their lives are in chains, and they’re being screwed by rich and super rich and mega rich and Uber rich assholes (all subscribing to the James Buchanan play book) , they just have little idea or clue beyond the ballot box what to do or what to replace all those horrible people and crap with. It ain’t rocket science (although, Sheldon Cooper did take offence at being called a rocket scientist by his sister. He equated that with being called a toll taker on the Golden Gate bridge while he’s a theoretical physicist. So maybe I should have said it ain’t theoretical physics).
Sorry too many comments…but no one’s reading them anyway…just letting off steam in the dark digital void.
How’s that, my comment may even be longer than Yanis’s essay. Take that Yanis!
Hence why Yanis could do more good by resuming the “debate” with Michael Albert re Parecon and his own ideas. Visionary ideas that could be measured against each other to find what are somewhat similar what are different, if any. Or could it be that some ideas of each could be incorporated into each persons model or whatever, Reshaping it, enhancing it etc., lessening the differences? Stupid thought?
Then there should be constant spruiking of both, using one’s high profile (Yanis has been on Russell “My Shirts Half Open To Show You My Chain” Brand’s show…could have whispered to him to interview Michael Albert or Robin Hahnel…but probably didn’t) or standing within the left landscape for good and not just spruiking one’s favoured vision, or one’s own, at the expense of another maybe. Or not just having one’s vision merely being dumped somewhere on a marginal website to squat hidden from the view of pretty much most people even within the left landscape.
I’m tired of analyses of capitalism and markets, new terms and phrases, neologisms and the rest. It’s hard enough keeping abreast of what’s happening currently let alone learning new things every two seconds while you’re also trying to do shit you actually enjoy doing in order that life doesn’t become too burdensome, tedious, hard, horrific, sad, and just, well, depressingly pointlessly exhausting .
Techno-feudalism just says we ain’t got very far re change over the last two hundred years since say, Robert Owen. Many within the left landscape do free shit that helps ye olde capitalist boss. P2p folk do. And sometimes simplicity folk build communities on land owned by someone, an individual, who accepts their free work to look after their property in exchange for them living simply, building tiny houses and what not, thinking they’re making a change to things as if we could all just do it if we decided to. Not that easy for the millions who live in high rise public housing and live on the squint of a dollar. Not exactly the same I suppose, but the feudal imagery is kinda there for me.
But I’m not as smart as Yanis. So maybe there’s something life changing, enlightening, something if value for some, in his constant analyses of capitalism. I thought so with Paul Street until I reached a point where he really just was saying the same thing over and over again, using only slightly different words and phrases modified by someone’s latest, as he always said, “very important book”. Tedious.
There are still not enough folk within the left landscape speaking of and spruiking possible coherent alternatives. They’re there, out there, visions that is, but who knows of them? Very few indeed. The simplicity folk, degrowthers, Zapatistas, Rojavan ideas, coops etc., are well known to an extent, by more people, but these aren’t alternative economic models but rather islands of autonomous and semi-autonomous communities who present no clear external economic institutional structure on how to scale up and economically talk to each other and coordinate and in a way that doesn’t undermine shared values and benefits. For instance, Anitra Nelson talks of simplicity communities, outlines what they may look like even, internally, etc., then declares there would still be a “digital” library, an internet, computers, screens (omg!!!). Obviously simplicity folk are not doing away with technology completely. It will be there she says. Ok, but how? Cable or satellite? The former requires substantial industry and the latter requires a space program and a “digital” library, a computer, requires a mineral extractive industry far beyond what her “vision” and most simplicity folk’s vision ever details. And they never talk of medical equipment…ever. Like not even how to manufacture one scalpel?
And surely all the market socialist models ain’t that different? Surely all those smart economic types who devise them and use economic lingo etc., could actually see the similarities of all these supposed “different” visions still incorporating markets and streamline ideas, getting rid of redundant stuff. And at the least, could they not see each market socialist model as a transitional possibility that could very easily lead toward a Parecon. Like why are they all presented as separate models that all us who find economic lingo boring have to read and understand and then pick or choose? So stupid. Would not that king of left landscape cooperative work on vision make it easier for ordinary idiots like me to see the possibility of alternatives rather than having to hear about that one over there, then read about that one over there, then another over there and another and make my own mind up. Like, yeah, that’s gonna happen. Tedious, boring and totally time consuming in a way the ordinary person will not invest in. Shit, the ordinary person struggles to listen to music they like that goes for longer than five minutes. And most people still think Elvis was talented. Speak to Ray Charles (in your prayers) about that last comment.
If vision builders are all part of the left landscape, they should talk to each other and streamline their ideas, massage each other’s egos so no one gets offended, and build alternative visions (or just one vision, for fuck sake. It could be that there is only one) that don’t oppose the other but enhance the other, build on the other, and work together toward the same goal. And why not even talk of Parecon in glowing terms all the friggin’ time, regardless of your opinion about it, because it deserves them. It’s one of a kind. The only non-market coherent thing out there. It’s up there with Marx’s Kapital you idiots. Is it really that hard to see that and do? Even if you think it not feasible? Maybe your opinion and your model is bloody shit and not feasible dude…usually they’re dudes. Kate Raworth isn’t but hers isn’t so much a model. Why describe Parecon in bullshit terms like nonsense on stilts as if to say, I’m smarter than Albert and Hahnel? Where’s that arrogance get anyone? What are ordinary folk to think if they hear that from someone within the left landscape? Huh? And don’t ignore it because you think it’s silly (maybe your visions silly) or a blueprint. There are no blueprints. And who cares if it is one? You have to read about it to know and even an overly detailed vision could contain some gems. Take the good ones, dump the rest. I’m sick of this blueprint argument as well. And the ignorance argument. Stuff ‘em both in a paper cone and in your arse, set it on fire and you can fly to the moon. Both arguments are pedantic and tiresome to hear. Plus, it makes no difference on a practical level really, whether we improvise our way to a better future or have a plan, in terms of actual ideas. The improvised way will be using all or most current knowledge about shit, that exist or pop up inside peoples heads at any time, but just maybe in piece meal, while a plan may have all the same stuff already in there…and more. But there us a possibility tgat without a plan we could really end up in a shit place or never get to a good one because we constantly and stupidly deny we can possibly know what a good place may be for fear of overstepping on future generations. Improvisers would, could easily, do the same thing. I know, I am an improviser. Improvising is just a process. It still makes Shit that actually exists and affects future generations no differently than a known detailed plan. And when Alperovitz talks of participatory planning, he should talk of Parecon as much if not more than anything else because that’s what it bloody is. (But he usually doesn’t. And if he does, it’s usually just very briefly). Not just anchor institutions and participatory budgeting stuff. Just because he thinks Parecon not feasible does not mean it is? I don’t think his pluralist commonwealths is feasible! So there, Gar, take that. He should be telling everyone about parecon along with other visions. He kind of already does the latter at the NSP because all other visions are really just variations on a theme of market socialism and a mixture of coops and community economics, to be placed somewhere along the spectrum of change. Like a GGND could be seen as a necessary but somewhat minimal market socialist model, a starting point.
But what would I know. I write long comments that no one reads nor cares about and go off on tangents in ways that shit people. I haven’t had my brain rewired by social media because I don’t care about it at all. Plus I have a tone that probably shits people. Not well-mannered enough and don’t talk about the “right” things the “right” way. Too aggressive (omg!!!). So this comment probably contains nothing of value that some smart, got good marks at school, person could say in two sentences.
Bloody hell.
So we live in a techno-feudal world now. Big shit. Changing it requires talking about “what to” more than what something friggin’ always is now. That’s just always far easier.
I’m done here.
Just found this site. Never knew it existed before. Thank Putin for that I guess because was trying to figure out the meaning or sig ificance of using the letter Z……like you claim (erroneously I feel) I too am just a thick uneducated peasant but your comments here resonated with me. So you can know now at least one disaffected left leaning anarchist peasant with no formal education and no economic stability or power is reading them mate.