Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1986692
K. Bronson, Phoebe Sengers
Since 2018, there has been a public backlash against Big Tech – notably against Facebook and Google which have been labeled as ‘ethical miscreants’ that abuse personal data collected from internet use for corporate profit (Solon, 2017; Zuboff, 2019). Less visible both in terms of popular outcry and critical scholarship are some of the largest and longest-standing oligopolistic corporations in North America – big agribusinesses – which increasingly center their business models on the collection and processing of data. For example, every John Deere tractor manufactured today is a piece equipment containing built-in sensors that collect and stream data about soil and crop conditions. Deere & Company has signed 13 legal agreements with seed/chemical corporations, such as Bayer/Monsanto, that allow for data transfer between tractors and other input supply (e.g. chemicals) corporations. As large agribusiness companies become data powerhouses, critical scholarship and activism has not kept up. Compared to critical scholarly attention to big data in other sectors, there is a small, although rapidly growing, cohort of critical scholars working on agricultural big data (see Wolf and Wood, 1997; Driessen and Heutinck, 2015; Carolan 2017; Eastwood et al., 2017; Klerkx et al., 2019; Bronson, 2019). Moreover, the tremendous amount of public activism against big data and algorithms in other sectors has not been applied to agribusinesses – those historically dealing in machinery, seeds and chemicals – whom we can increasingly read as data companies. In this paper, we explore the intersection of Big Tech and big agribusiness. More broadly, we illustrate how an STS lens can be leveraged to broaden and deepen understandings of Big Tech by analyzing and comparing how Big
{"title":"Big Tech Meets Big Ag: Diversifying Epistemologies of Data and Power","authors":"K. Bronson, Phoebe Sengers","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.1986692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1986692","url":null,"abstract":"Since 2018, there has been a public backlash against Big Tech – notably against Facebook and Google which have been labeled as ‘ethical miscreants’ that abuse personal data collected from internet use for corporate profit (Solon, 2017; Zuboff, 2019). Less visible both in terms of popular outcry and critical scholarship are some of the largest and longest-standing oligopolistic corporations in North America – big agribusinesses – which increasingly center their business models on the collection and processing of data. For example, every John Deere tractor manufactured today is a piece equipment containing built-in sensors that collect and stream data about soil and crop conditions. Deere & Company has signed 13 legal agreements with seed/chemical corporations, such as Bayer/Monsanto, that allow for data transfer between tractors and other input supply (e.g. chemicals) corporations. As large agribusiness companies become data powerhouses, critical scholarship and activism has not kept up. Compared to critical scholarly attention to big data in other sectors, there is a small, although rapidly growing, cohort of critical scholars working on agricultural big data (see Wolf and Wood, 1997; Driessen and Heutinck, 2015; Carolan 2017; Eastwood et al., 2017; Klerkx et al., 2019; Bronson, 2019). Moreover, the tremendous amount of public activism against big data and algorithms in other sectors has not been applied to agribusinesses – those historically dealing in machinery, seeds and chemicals – whom we can increasingly read as data companies. In this paper, we explore the intersection of Big Tech and big agribusiness. More broadly, we illustrate how an STS lens can be leveraged to broaden and deepen understandings of Big Tech by analyzing and comparing how Big","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"111 4","pages":"15 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41288653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2025214
Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Marelli, I. van Hoyweghen
ABSTRACT Promising to improve the quality of care while decreasing healthcare costs, digital health technologies (DHT) are welcomed as a solution to the challenges increasingly faced by healthcare systems in the global north. In recent years, tech developers, consultants, policymakers, and researchers in the US have heralded Big Tech entrepreneurs as driving the emergence of these technologies. However, apart from Silicon Valley visions of DHT, there are a range of regulations, devices, institutions, and practices constituting the DHT assemblage in the US. These include US policies following the global financial crisis of 2008 – such as the US' monetary policy, and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) – and the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Accordingly, a more granular approach is required to understand the rise of DHT beyond these stereotypical ‘Silicon Valley’ accounts of the emergence of disruptive digital technologies. Careful attention on various, seemingly unrelated, policymaking events reveals how the unintended alignment of these US policy visions, regulations, devices, institutions, and practices have played an instrumental role in the successful emergence of DHT, while also impacting ongoing global developments of these technologies.
{"title":"The Role of US Policymaking in the Emergence of a Digital Health Assemblage","authors":"Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Marelli, I. van Hoyweghen","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2025214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2025214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Promising to improve the quality of care while decreasing healthcare costs, digital health technologies (DHT) are welcomed as a solution to the challenges increasingly faced by healthcare systems in the global north. In recent years, tech developers, consultants, policymakers, and researchers in the US have heralded Big Tech entrepreneurs as driving the emergence of these technologies. However, apart from Silicon Valley visions of DHT, there are a range of regulations, devices, institutions, and practices constituting the DHT assemblage in the US. These include US policies following the global financial crisis of 2008 – such as the US' monetary policy, and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) – and the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Accordingly, a more granular approach is required to understand the rise of DHT beyond these stereotypical ‘Silicon Valley’ accounts of the emergence of disruptive digital technologies. Careful attention on various, seemingly unrelated, policymaking events reveals how the unintended alignment of these US policy visions, regulations, devices, institutions, and practices have played an instrumental role in the successful emergence of DHT, while also impacting ongoing global developments of these technologies.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"72 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46601789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-27DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2019214
S. Edwards, S. Vallance, R. Montgomery
ABSTRACT Genetically modified (GM) ‘tearless’ onions were developed in a New Zealand laboratory facility in 2007, but efforts to initiate a field test were unsuccessful, and by 2012 the project had been almost completely dismantled. The overall trajectory of this project was influenced by a collaboration between teams of scientists in Japan and New Zealand; commercial pressures in the New Zealand science system; different regulatory processes that must be followed for indoor versus outdoor research; and activists who detected a containment breach in a GM Brassicas field test. The combination of factors that led to the ultimate demise of GM tearless onions also reveals that some aspects of GM research are not subject to debate, but these would be missing from our analysis if we had only focused on what is present in this controversy. Hence, shifting attention to what is absent from controversy reveals ‘interstitial silences’: matters that lie beyond the boundaries of public debate, but are nevertheless part of the overall trajectory of sociotechnical change. An attention to interstitial silences contributes to an emerging literature on the ecologies of participation by complexifying understandings of what is being negotiated in these participatory spaces. Future research in this area should therefore search for interstitial silences, and also explore how understandings of spatial complexity could be used to further reimagine the wider spaces of participation through which trajectories of sociotechnical change are negotiated.
{"title":"Interstitial Silences in Sociotechnical Change: The Case of Genetically Modified ‘Tearless’ Onions","authors":"S. Edwards, S. Vallance, R. Montgomery","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2019214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2019214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Genetically modified (GM) ‘tearless’ onions were developed in a New Zealand laboratory facility in 2007, but efforts to initiate a field test were unsuccessful, and by 2012 the project had been almost completely dismantled. The overall trajectory of this project was influenced by a collaboration between teams of scientists in Japan and New Zealand; commercial pressures in the New Zealand science system; different regulatory processes that must be followed for indoor versus outdoor research; and activists who detected a containment breach in a GM Brassicas field test. The combination of factors that led to the ultimate demise of GM tearless onions also reveals that some aspects of GM research are not subject to debate, but these would be missing from our analysis if we had only focused on what is present in this controversy. Hence, shifting attention to what is absent from controversy reveals ‘interstitial silences’: matters that lie beyond the boundaries of public debate, but are nevertheless part of the overall trajectory of sociotechnical change. An attention to interstitial silences contributes to an emerging literature on the ecologies of participation by complexifying understandings of what is being negotiated in these participatory spaces. Future research in this area should therefore search for interstitial silences, and also explore how understandings of spatial complexity could be used to further reimagine the wider spaces of participation through which trajectories of sociotechnical change are negotiated.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"212 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46524680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-10DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2012649
Jonathan Wald
{"title":"A Philosophical Anthropology of Order Itself","authors":"Jonathan Wald","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2012649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2012649","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"276 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42353165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-23DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1999403
M. Lanzing, Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Siffels
Embrace Between Google/Apple and the EU in Fighting the Pandemic Through Contact Tracing Apps Marjolein Lanzing *, Elisa Lievevrouw * and Lotje Siffels * Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Life Sciences & Society Lab, Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium; Department of Ethics and Political Philosophy, iHub, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
{"title":"It Takes Two to Techno-Tango: An Analysis of a Close Embrace Between Google/Apple and the EU in Fighting the Pandemic Through Contact Tracing Apps","authors":"M. Lanzing, Elisa Lievevrouw, L. Siffels","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.1999403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1999403","url":null,"abstract":"Embrace Between Google/Apple and the EU in Fighting the Pandemic Through Contact Tracing Apps Marjolein Lanzing *, Elisa Lievevrouw * and Lotje Siffels * Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Life Sciences & Society Lab, Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium; Department of Ethics and Political Philosophy, iHub, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"136 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48286966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-22DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2000597
Jacob Hellman
At a conference of technology entrepreneurs in 2015, a moderator introduced a panel of executives in charge of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo. ‘We put it on the Eventbrite invitation: “What one question do you want answered?,”’ he announced. ‘By far, the audience’s most common response was “how do we get on your radar?”’ (Foundersuite, 2015). This event was not atypical; law firms who conduct and profit from corporate acquisitions host such panels regularly, and they archive them on YouTube for consumption by hopeful entrepreneurs everywhere. They indicate that dominant technology firms have become so not by internal expansion alone, but also by acquiring other firms. Between 2015 and 2020, Amazon made 42 acquisitions; Apple 33; Facebook 21; Google (Alphabet) 48; and Microsoft 53 (Motta and Peitz, 2020, citing multiple sources). These Big Tech companies, colloquially referenced as GAFAM, and their acquisitions, have come under public and regulatory scrutiny for their anti-competitive effects. What is rarely recognized is that Big Tech’s tendency to acquire startups and absorb their intellectual property, workers, and user base owes not only to its own ‘voracious appetite,’ as both the popular press and scholars describe it (Tiku, 2017; Glick et al., 2021). This tendency is also driven by the supply side, as it were, in that many founders of technology startups – and their investors – want to get acquired. This paper problematizes a popular but increasingly anachronistic view of competition which holds that entrepreneurs invent new products to win market share from incumbents. In the contemporary technology sector, this idealized process is often short-circuited; it is now common for startups to develop products which deliberately aim to compliment or enhance the offerings of established companies. The goal of many startups is not to compete with, but to get incorporated into, Big Tech. This current reality
{"title":"Big Tech’s ‘Voracious Appetite,’ or Entrepreneurs Who Dream of Acquisition? Regulation and the Interpenetration of Corporate Scales","authors":"Jacob Hellman","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2000597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2000597","url":null,"abstract":"At a conference of technology entrepreneurs in 2015, a moderator introduced a panel of executives in charge of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo. ‘We put it on the Eventbrite invitation: “What one question do you want answered?,”’ he announced. ‘By far, the audience’s most common response was “how do we get on your radar?”’ (Foundersuite, 2015). This event was not atypical; law firms who conduct and profit from corporate acquisitions host such panels regularly, and they archive them on YouTube for consumption by hopeful entrepreneurs everywhere. They indicate that dominant technology firms have become so not by internal expansion alone, but also by acquiring other firms. Between 2015 and 2020, Amazon made 42 acquisitions; Apple 33; Facebook 21; Google (Alphabet) 48; and Microsoft 53 (Motta and Peitz, 2020, citing multiple sources). These Big Tech companies, colloquially referenced as GAFAM, and their acquisitions, have come under public and regulatory scrutiny for their anti-competitive effects. What is rarely recognized is that Big Tech’s tendency to acquire startups and absorb their intellectual property, workers, and user base owes not only to its own ‘voracious appetite,’ as both the popular press and scholars describe it (Tiku, 2017; Glick et al., 2021). This tendency is also driven by the supply side, as it were, in that many founders of technology startups – and their investors – want to get acquired. This paper problematizes a popular but increasingly anachronistic view of competition which holds that entrepreneurs invent new products to win market share from incumbents. In the contemporary technology sector, this idealized process is often short-circuited; it is now common for startups to develop products which deliberately aim to compliment or enhance the offerings of established companies. The goal of many startups is not to compete with, but to get incorporated into, Big Tech. This current reality","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"149 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41437323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-19DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2005562
David Mills, N. Robinson
ABSTRACT As the global university sector continues to expand, ever more academic work is being published, including growing numbers of academic monographs. Digital technologies open up opportunities for publishers to reach new academic communities. Drawing on interviews with authors and publishers, case-studies of two companies - Lambert Academic Publishing (Lambert) and Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP) - interrogate their inclusive, author-centred visions. Conceptualisations of academic ‘credibility economies' strain to account for the different rationales academics have for publishing their work across a fragmented and multipolar global research system. Work has tended to focus on researchers' strategies for accumulating and managing credibility, rather than the structural blockages to, and the geographical constraints on, the flow of academic credibility. For researchers working at the margins of existing credibility economies, publishing an academic monograph is also about gaining global visibility and recognition. Promising to democratise publishing, the two publishers have both been accused of ‘predatory' business practices. In response, CSP has sought to accumulate scholarly credibility, whilst Lambert rejects what it calls ‘traditional' approaches to evaluating reputation and legitimacy. The two case-studies support a postcolonial critique of the ‘predatory publishing’ discourse, highlighting the exclusions and effacements enacted by the global academic publishing ecosystem.
{"title":"Democratising Monograph Publishing or Preying on Researchers? Scholarly Recognition and Global ‘Credibility Economies’","authors":"David Mills, N. Robinson","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2005562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2005562","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As the global university sector continues to expand, ever more academic work is being published, including growing numbers of academic monographs. Digital technologies open up opportunities for publishers to reach new academic communities. Drawing on interviews with authors and publishers, case-studies of two companies - Lambert Academic Publishing (Lambert) and Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP) - interrogate their inclusive, author-centred visions. Conceptualisations of academic ‘credibility economies' strain to account for the different rationales academics have for publishing their work across a fragmented and multipolar global research system. Work has tended to focus on researchers' strategies for accumulating and managing credibility, rather than the structural blockages to, and the geographical constraints on, the flow of academic credibility. For researchers working at the margins of existing credibility economies, publishing an academic monograph is also about gaining global visibility and recognition. Promising to democratise publishing, the two publishers have both been accused of ‘predatory' business practices. In response, CSP has sought to accumulate scholarly credibility, whilst Lambert rejects what it calls ‘traditional' approaches to evaluating reputation and legitimacy. The two case-studies support a postcolonial critique of the ‘predatory publishing’ discourse, highlighting the exclusions and effacements enacted by the global academic publishing ecosystem.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"187 - 211"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47889703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-16DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451
Gemma Cirac-Claveras
ABSTRACT Imagining space technology has been influenced by (usually American-centred) turning points in rocketry, launchers, space exploration and human spaceflight: principally in terms of techno-bureaucratic Big Science products embedded in Cold War rivalry, military and prestige objectives. While this representation is useful to understand many developments of the space age, it has tended to downplay the role of natural history practices of data collection and interpretation in the development of space technology. The notion of sociotechnical imaginary helps to reveal a more complex and complete understanding of the history of space technology. Between 1967 and 1973, the vision of the French remote-sensing satellite as both enabled by and an extension of aircraft photo-interpretation helped to shape scientific and technological expectations of remote-sensing technology. In turn, the practices, values, and visions of aircraft photo-interpreters informed the development of satellite remote-sensing work. In particular, the fieldwork-driven research mode, focusing on data collection and field observations, was an important part of satellite technology development –a tie which remains strong today. Approaching remote-sensing satellite technology through historical research not only suggests a particular way of imagining space technology within the tradition of field science practices, discourses, and history, but also allows us to reflect on the power and limitations of prevalent imaginaries to fully understand the space age and its place in history.
{"title":"Re-imagining The Space Age: Early Satellite Development from Earthly Fieldwork Practice","authors":"Gemma Cirac-Claveras","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.2001451","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Imagining space technology has been influenced by (usually American-centred) turning points in rocketry, launchers, space exploration and human spaceflight: principally in terms of techno-bureaucratic Big Science products embedded in Cold War rivalry, military and prestige objectives. While this representation is useful to understand many developments of the space age, it has tended to downplay the role of natural history practices of data collection and interpretation in the development of space technology. The notion of sociotechnical imaginary helps to reveal a more complex and complete understanding of the history of space technology. Between 1967 and 1973, the vision of the French remote-sensing satellite as both enabled by and an extension of aircraft photo-interpretation helped to shape scientific and technological expectations of remote-sensing technology. In turn, the practices, values, and visions of aircraft photo-interpreters informed the development of satellite remote-sensing work. In particular, the fieldwork-driven research mode, focusing on data collection and field observations, was an important part of satellite technology development –a tie which remains strong today. Approaching remote-sensing satellite technology through historical research not only suggests a particular way of imagining space technology within the tradition of field science practices, discourses, and history, but also allows us to reflect on the power and limitations of prevalent imaginaries to fully understand the space age and its place in history.","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"163 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46323030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-04DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1990875
Thao Phan, Jake Goldenfein, Monique Mann, D. Kuch
Thao Phan , Jake Goldenfein, Monique Mann and Declan Kuch Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making & Society Melbourne, Australia; The Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia; Melbourne Law school, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Australia; School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia; Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia
{"title":"Economies of Virtue: The Circulation of ‘Ethics’ in Big Tech","authors":"Thao Phan, Jake Goldenfein, Monique Mann, D. Kuch","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.1990875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1990875","url":null,"abstract":"Thao Phan , Jake Goldenfein, Monique Mann and Declan Kuch Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making & Society Melbourne, Australia; The Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia; Melbourne Law school, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Australia; School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia; Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"121 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48346270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2021.1990874
Guy Balzam, Noam Yuran
The most valuable companies in 2021 are tech firms known as ‘Big Tech’. In recent years these companies were the subject of public and academic scrutiny, especially because they were accused of acting as monopolies (Kenney and Zysman, 2016), maintaining a profit regime sometimes referred to as ‘techfeudalism’ (Waters, 2020), and of having a vast and unprecedented social and political impact (Moore and Tambini, 2018). In a 2018 Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, denied the accusation that his company is a monopoly, and his position was echoed by other Big Tech CEO’s. This position, we argue, is symptomatic of the nature of digital monopolies, which can be termed ‘fragile monopolies.’ Earlymanifestoes of the digital revolution, such as Negroponte’s Being Digital (1995), argued that the digital sphere was inherently resistant to monopoly control. There was a sound reasoning for this claim: bits, in contrast to atoms, are replicable and very cheaply so. History, obviously, refuted the promise of economically decentralized digital sphere. Yet Negroponte’s basic insight is important for understanding the form that contemporary Big Tech monopolies assume. They are motivated by a preliminary aim of creating monopolies, in an environment which is resistant to centralization. For that purpose, they develop from the outset things that can indeed be monopolized in the digital sphere. The popular aversion often directed at Big Tech companies reflects the unique form of their monopoly.What theymonopolize typically belongs to the sphere of intimate experience: forms of self-expression, social ties, or users’ memories and habits. Their presence in our lives is often presented as intrusive, but this intrusiveness reflects, in fact, the ephemeral nature of their assets. We argue that the emergence of a new form of monopoly has to do with a fact whose significance has been largely overlooked in research; namely that
{"title":"Assetization and the Logic of Venture Capital, or Why Facebook Does not ‘Feel’ Like a Monopoly to Zuckerberg","authors":"Guy Balzam, Noam Yuran","doi":"10.1080/09505431.2021.1990874","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1990874","url":null,"abstract":"The most valuable companies in 2021 are tech firms known as ‘Big Tech’. In recent years these companies were the subject of public and academic scrutiny, especially because they were accused of acting as monopolies (Kenney and Zysman, 2016), maintaining a profit regime sometimes referred to as ‘techfeudalism’ (Waters, 2020), and of having a vast and unprecedented social and political impact (Moore and Tambini, 2018). In a 2018 Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, denied the accusation that his company is a monopoly, and his position was echoed by other Big Tech CEO’s. This position, we argue, is symptomatic of the nature of digital monopolies, which can be termed ‘fragile monopolies.’ Earlymanifestoes of the digital revolution, such as Negroponte’s Being Digital (1995), argued that the digital sphere was inherently resistant to monopoly control. There was a sound reasoning for this claim: bits, in contrast to atoms, are replicable and very cheaply so. History, obviously, refuted the promise of economically decentralized digital sphere. Yet Negroponte’s basic insight is important for understanding the form that contemporary Big Tech monopolies assume. They are motivated by a preliminary aim of creating monopolies, in an environment which is resistant to centralization. For that purpose, they develop from the outset things that can indeed be monopolized in the digital sphere. The popular aversion often directed at Big Tech companies reflects the unique form of their monopoly.What theymonopolize typically belongs to the sphere of intimate experience: forms of self-expression, social ties, or users’ memories and habits. Their presence in our lives is often presented as intrusive, but this intrusiveness reflects, in fact, the ephemeral nature of their assets. We argue that the emergence of a new form of monopoly has to do with a fact whose significance has been largely overlooked in research; namely that","PeriodicalId":47064,"journal":{"name":"Science As Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"107 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46297900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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