Deleuze and the Digital: On the Materiality of Algorithmic Infrastructures

In his short and often quoted essay ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, Gilles Deleuze famously describes the structures of power in the dawning twenty-first century as driven by ‘machines of a third type, computers’, as novel and predominantly digital infrastructures. In fact, from a Deleuzian perspective the entire ecosystem of the digital transformation can be described as a larger shift in modes of production and the political economy. This essay proposes to read this ‘technological evolution’ as the power of algorithms and their material substance – digital infrastructures that entail a different mode of interaction between humans and technology. In looking at these infrastructures from a materialist position, my essay reconceptualises the digital as the unfolding logic of assemblages that have been shaping a ‘long now’ of technological modernity. In bringing a Deleuzian reading of infrastructures to the study of technology and society, this essay seeks to shed a new light on the political function – and the increasing abstraction – of infrastructures in the realm of the digital.

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Indigenous peoples, capitalism and the political economy of the socialisms of the twenty-first century in Latin America

Venezuela Reframed ◽

10.5040/9781350223806.ch-007 ◽

2015 ◽

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Latin America ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

Twenty First Century

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Conclusion: The Political Economy of Sport in the Twenty-first Century

The Political Economy of Sport ◽

10.1057/9780230524057_10 ◽

2005 ◽

pp. 208-214 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

John Nauright

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

Twenty First Century

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The political economy of twenty-first century socialism

Soundings ◽

10.3898/136266207820465543 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 37 (37) ◽

pp. 105-115 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Pat Devine

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

Twenty First Century

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The Political Economy of Caribbean Regionalism in the Twenty-First Century: Rebirth or Resuscitation?

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2298857 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Curtis J. Raynold

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

Twenty First Century

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The political economy of twenty-first-century conservatism

Reconstructing Conservatism? ◽

10.7228/manchester/9780719083167.003.0007 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 119-135

Author(s):

Richard Hayton

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

Twenty First Century

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The Political Economy of Twenty-First Century Thai Supernaturalism

South East Asia Research ◽

10.5367/sear.2012.0128 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 20 (4) ◽

pp. 611-622 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Peter A. Jackson

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

Twenty First Century

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Thomas Piketty’s Book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Karl Marx and the Political Economy of the Internet

tripleC Communication Capitalism & Critique Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society ◽

10.31269/triplec.v12i1.575 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 413-430 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Christian Fuchs

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Social Order ◽

Karl Marx ◽

Social Democracy ◽

Tax Avoidance ◽

First Century ◽

The Political ◽

The Internet ◽

The Social ◽

Twenty First Century

Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has resulted in a sustained political and academic debate about capitalism in the 21st century. This article discusses the relevance of the book in the context of Karl Marx’s works and the political economy of the Internet. It identifies 3 common reactions to Piketty’s book: 1) dignification; 2) denigration of the work’s integrity; 3) the denial of any parallel to Marx. I argue that all three reactions do not help the task of creating a New Left that is urgently needed in the situation of sustained capitalist crisis. Marxists will certainly view Piketty’s analysis of capitalism and political suggestions critically. I argue that they should however not dismiss them, but like Marx and Engels aim to radicalise reform suggestions. In relation to the Internet, this paper discusses especially how insights from Piketty’s book can inform the discussion of tax avoidance by transnational Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. For establishing an alternative, non-commercial, non-capitalist Internet one can draw insights about institutional reforms and progressive capital taxation from Piketty that can be radicalised in order to ground radical-reformist Internet politics.“The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the social democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal-the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labor. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim” (Rosa Luxemburg 1899, 41).

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