 Good evening everybody. I don't think we've ever been this punctual in this series actually So welcome to the void in this case at least the physical void Welcome to the empty theater Hebel am ufa how tonight for our first online only edition of our series making sense of the digital society We that is the federal agency for civic education Education Bundeszentrale for politischer Bildung and the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society the two partners that curate The series and thank you of course to Hebel am ufa how the third partnering agent that is already Experienced in putting things online that were originally intended to be physical first We thought that the void behind me which you can see and behind tonight's speaker to come is a far more suitable backdrop Than yet another bookshelf or men showing off their nostrils to the camera It also reminds us of a certain realism that is so hard to maintain in this surreal time This emptiness is the new realness in this crisis for theaters. That is not true for public parks Not for roads in Berlin If it is true for churches or synagogues or mosques will be discussed this week Another space that is far from being empty because of the pandemic is the internet Rich men get richer digital capitalism may be not for the first time the winner of this crisis We spend even more time online than before since public physical space is heavily contested in terms of corona But how public is what we perceive as public in digital capitalism? And what does that term refer to exactly in a time in the acute crisis of public health is about to turn into a socio-economic crisis of the global economy how our digitization and socio-economic crisis related and What can we learn from this about a post corona world? These are just some of the key questions our speaker tonight is going to address in a minute When he delivers his talk with the title the crisis of digital capitalism crisis in the plural sense Before I will introduce our speaker here's a few things about Tonight and about the series first we will be briefer than we normally are we do not expect you to hang out here for two hours And get drunk on well criticism theory, of course after the talk the two of us will start the Conversation here on stage with a due distance, of course, it's exactly two meters actually it's been measured And then it will be up to you you can turn in your questions On a participation tool called slide.com I think you see it on your respective websites if you're watching right now under the hashtag at digital society So Slido sort of simulates the notion of a closed room a bit better than not Twitter We thought your questions can be seen by other users as well And you will have the option to vote on those questions Christian Graufel props to him for organizing these events So well, we'll read the questions to us in a theater here live In case you should wake up in the middle of the night and feel like knowing more about the series You can find most of our events as videos on Hig.de Hig.de go to events and you will find making sense of the digital society and The federal agency for civic education Bundlesentral of a political building just launched a project this afternoon called Bpb colon connect Where our event is being streamed as we speak it wants to connect with experts and stakeholders It says of civic society and education from different regions and countries and to take up International corporations and debates the platform started today with the first kickoff and will be built step by step This is the time I usually In my intro referred to I get together afterwards to the small buffet and the drinks in the upper foyer Not tonight for obvious reasons in order for you not to get too hungry and still be able to have dinner at a reasonable time We expect to finish at about a quarter past eight at the latest for once So our guest tonight is professor of sociology of the future of work at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Einstein Center Digital future as a sociologist. He deals with the topics of technology labor political economy and social inequality in his research in recent years He has focused on the leading companies of the commercial Internet such as Google Amazon Apple Facebook Alibaba and Tencent as well as various startups He has worked extensively with Heinz Bude in Humboldt and in Kassel often about the Sociology of inequality and topics such as the service proletariat They together co-edited a book called capitalism Oh and Ungleichheit but our speaker has also three monographies out the latest from last fall at the renowned German publisher Sua Kamp It is called digital a capitalism marked and hershoffed in the economy the Unknap height from which he would draw a couple of points for tonight's talk But it is far more than an abstract the current situation will not be ignored Of course, but now please welcome our speaker Philip stop Thanks for having me and thank you for this Kind introduction. I'm very happy to be here. I was asked to give a general input about Economic aspects of digitalization and I thought There would be Well, I think there is no sense in talking about digital capitalism right now without talking about the current crisis The crisis of public health first and foremost but for many people right now and Definitely in the years to come an economic crisis of dramatic proportion It is a crisis of globalized just-in-time capitalism with supply chains Disrupted and companies governments and citizens suddenly realizing the fragility of global production networks and the impact of this on health and social stability as well as the systematic relevance of social infrastructure on the one hand and Digital services such as cloud computing video communication and of course online shopping on the other hand What I want to do today in the following 20 to 25 minutes is to ask in which way we can expect this crisis to also hit The very core of capitalist transformation of recent decades the digital economy or as I usually call it digital capitalism The digital economy which is centered around the commercial internet Has for at least the last 20 years been the poster child for the rejuvenation of global capitalism or at least attempts at such While large parts of the economy of the OECD world dealt with stagnation leading digital Little leading digital companies grew through crisis They grew after the dot-combust of 2000 building on infrastructure laid out during the boom of the 90s and in a market environment where a Good junk of the competition had been erased by the crash They grew also after the financial crisis of 2008 2009 and so on when technology was again considered the new Messiah of economic growth with The result of course as is well known of a higher and higher concentration of economic power in the hands of leading digital corporations Will this crisis or will the crisis to come be any different for digital capitalism in Order to get an idea of the answer to this question. I argue that we first have to understand two things First what is digital capitalism and secondly what might be the power technology angle of the present crisis? So let me start by the first question. What is digital capitalism? Well, first of all, it is a concept. I borrowed from American historian Dan Schiller Who did two books on the topic one in the 1990s and one in 2014 with Schiller being a historian these books are thick descriptions of the political economy of global ICT industries Me being a sociologist with a strong interest in political economy. I took a bit of a different approach Trying to develop what I would call an analytical theory of contemporary digital capitalism connecting sociology and political economy This of course is no easy task The term digital capitalism has gained some popularity in broader public discourse in recent years Here the term has been used to catch a continuously growing number of phenomena for several years now data giants such as Google are supposed to be just as much part of it as Self-driving cars e-commerce platforms mobile phone networks washing machines with internet access and Network production facilities important in Germany right industry for zero What it is exactly that these phenomena have in common However, and which would make them different from a broader term of capitalism. It's not easy. Maybe impossible to determine The obvious simple answer is of course that they are all based at least in part on digital technologies and These technologies are integrated into Processes of capitalist accumulation and exploitation Digital plus capitalism then makes digital capitalism This is what I call digital capitalism as a metaphor a metaphor for what one might ask well probably for capitalism as such a Metaphor of course does not satisfy our desire for analytical clarity The question remains as how to the whole matter Actually differs from quite normal or other special industrial cognitive aesthetic cybernetic Types forms of capitalism or put differently whether we are in fact dealing with a new or at least a particular type of capitalist development the chances to To be correct in answering this question with no are probably relatively high After all in any known capitalist formation the common ground outweighs the differences Otherwise, there would be no stable now Capitalism while the adjectives were variable industrial cognitive Cognitive digital and so on Nevertheless, let me outline two possible answers that formulate different thesis is on the analytical core of digital capitalism The first version could be called the data economy story The second one which I will emphasize. I will call the privatized markets theory Let's start with the common ground of both theoretical angles Instead of developing their theories from a diffuse set of technological Applications latest versions washing machines electric cars digital platforms and so on both approaches insist on the basic significance of The commercial internet for a theory of digital capitalism Here according to these positions a specific economic space has developed over the past 20 years Which on the one hand follows its own rules and on the other hand is in the process of permanently Subjugating new areas of the economy something that for example Josef van dyke has outlined in her talk in this talk series as well brilliantly So what is the core of these new rules that have developed in the commercial internet? Story one One possible answer to this question is provided by Shoshana Tsubov also a guest in this series in her opulent work The age of surveillance capitalism it reads it is about the data Data is first and foremost the by-product of digital communication Whenever we exchange information we leave traces that some companies use as a separate source of profit As is well known the leading companies of this development are the giants of online advertising Google and Facebook According to Zuboff the entire commercial internet can be understood as a huge surveillance apparatus Since capitalist Imperatives are at work this surveillance machinery must also expand constantly So according to Zuboff in recent years more and more companies have begun to focus their value creation on Profits from monitoring, which is why she assumes a rapid advance of surveillance capitalism in this picture smart washing machines Ecommerce platforms or household robots might be part of digital capitalism because they enable the appropriation of data by surveillance capitalist corporations What is new about Digital capitalism is then the rise of an economic logic, which is not aimed at resource efficient production of things productivity But at measuring influencing and ultimately controlling our behavior. Now. What about the second story? the one about privatized markets From this perspective it seems more interesting which larger economic project this data economies actually embedded in After all an economy cannot consist exclusively of online advertising My answer to this question is that we are dealing with a project to build a privatized or to put it more precisely proprietary markets The preliminary stage of such privately owned markets are the platform companies of the commercial internet which have in many cases established themselves as commercial monopolies For certain services such as taxi rides Uber music and music and video streaming Spotify Netflix or food delivery These private markets however are embedded in the socio-technical ecosystems of a small number of Companies among which the most important ones are Google Apple Amazon and Facebook at least for the global West The other platforms circulate like satellites around these platform planets By binding our attention the planets or you could call the meta platforms as well are more and more in control of what we perceive at all They control a large chunk of our attention as can be seen for example in ever-growing screen time during the current corona crisis This position of power is a goldmine Because in increasingly competitive consumer markets only those who can create attention for their products are actually able to sell them Control of users attention actually means control of consumption time or to put it more abstract Control user attention means control the demand side of a market Surveillance capitalist advertising is thus one way of capitalizing on consumer attention or on the control of demand It is of course just one such way Which is why the privatized markets theory emphasizes a variety of mechanisms of capitalizing on the market like function of meta platforms Most of these mechanisms are based on different types of fees Which the meta platforms charge for their function as markets? Including of course revenues from advertising But also more direct fees of for market participation like say the 30 percent of revenue of revenues Google's and Apple's app stores charge for transactions between say a German gamer and a game developing company in the Philippines The pointed thesis about digital capitalism then is That the leading companies of the commercial internet Google Apple Facebook Amazon do not really operate in markets Whose pricing mechanisms they might for example distort They are these markets They are these markets in the sense that for the economic space of the commercial internet They are the ones connecting almost all the supply apps other software content of all sorts e-commerce products To almost all the demand Everybody having a digital device By constantly expanding their product and service portfolios and controlling the distribution channels For the products of an ever-increasing number of external providers These private markets are permanently expanding their offerings on The demand side of the market i.e. with consumers they rely on different lock-in strategies On the one hand their own systems are continuously optimized for maximum convenience in order to reduce the need to switch to another system On the other hand they often make it difficult for consumers To use certain services outside their own ecosystems Lock-in effects can be observed empirically for example in retention rates of around 90% for both mobile operating systems iOS and Android It doesn't really matter then for the power of these companies that there are two of them theoretically competing for users When 90% of the users never leave their provider the power of market ownership materializes in four distinguishable forms of control information control through surveillance is Only the first step which incidentally is by no means only aimed at consumers, but also and particularly at producers Through information control platform companies not only want to tell us what to buy so to speak They also and maybe more importantly want to tell producers what to make and how to make it Uber drivers booksellers on Amazon App producers all over the world are told exactly how to deliver their services by the market owners The rules and conditions of how to behave on a privatized market Are made by those same companies the market owners leaving little choice to producers on how to deliver their services Why does this even work one might ask? Well, it works because information control enables three further forms of control Which are essential to privatized markets and which enforce the plot the power of platforms over producers So information control is the first type of control. The second one is control of excess Platforms rule over who can participate in a market Amazon for example, a regulatory blocks third-party vendors from its platform Sometimes for very good reasons like fake medical equipment Sometimes for reasons that are not so well understandable The third one is control of prices how much someone can charge for a product depends on the market environment Which is controlled by the meta platforms Platform operators have for example the opportunity to strategically expand their own offerings In order to lower prices for consumers and thus increase sales accordingly and accordingly their revenues fourth they cannot They can to a large extent control the performance of producers Operating in their market-like structure Just as publishers how Amazon or Facebook have changed the rules of books or online Publishing or check out the talk from Rasmus Kleis Nielsen in this talk series a little footnote on that matter Which angle on questions of power and inequality does this process imply? Let me just stress one very basic aspect Imagine an economy run through the organizing principle of proprietary markets like the ones we were talking about in other words Imagine a world which is like the internet in Such an economy a relevant amount of revenues educated guests 30% Might be extracted by market-like platforms Where are they extracted from? Well, if you take the commercial internet the answer in Most cases is they are extracted from producers not from consumers Consumers get highly subsidized products as is well-known in order in order to keep them attached to the platforms But producers have to play by the rules of Market-owning companies which includes their fees say again 30% of revenue These 30% are then missing on the producer or supply side of these markets But this is exactly where in this whole equation or this whole framework labor is located People are not only consumers Most of them have to work to make a living and they usually do so in Producing some sort of thing or service When 30% of their revenue is missing this is at least as a principle 30% missing from wages of these workers This is how this whole thing is and a source of social inequality footnote and Now how wide we how might we how might we sum up all this in an analytical way? Well asking about the analytical meaning of the formation of proprietary markets One is not referred to something completely new But rather to something quite ancient in the capitalist economy Proprietary markets correspond to the return of an idea which shaped the early capitalist pre-liberal epoch in Europe mercantilism Unlike in liberalism and also unlike in neoliberalism the basis of mercantilism at the time was an understanding of world trade as a zero-sum game This was particularly evident in the importance of the of an active trade balance, which was the central goal of the mercantilist state From this perspective Prosperity could only be achieved by cheating other parties Positive trade balances were regularly squeezed off the opposing parties By brute force for example with the help of state guaranteed and protected trade monopolies such as the British East India company Those were the market owners of the 17th century Digital capitalism's leading companies are the market owners of today This time however, we are dealing with privatized mercantilism The big difference between the emerging system of proprietary markets And classical mercantilism lies in the respective role of the state It was the state which promoted traditional trade monopolies because it profited from their businesses The proprietary markets of the commercial internet however On the other hand a privatized sector company private sector companies that in recent years Have been criticized for various anti-state practices tax avoidance for example or the promotion of Fragmentation of the political public sphere The state in other words could be described as the big loser of this development Especially since more and more of its infrastructure relies on services delivered by digital capitalism's leading companies So getting back to the start again Will the crisis to come be any different for digital capitalism than the crisis that proceeded it? preceded it When sticking to questions about the state we might be able to get the clearest picture of how it might differ however gradually Of course the immediate effects of the current crisis on technology are on the business side of things Probably reproducing a situation similar to the post comm and post post 2008 situation During the first weeks of the lockdown when consumer markets collapsed Amazon became more popular and powerful than ever This of course might mean more than a possible upward bump in revenues It might drastically change the image of Amazon creating something like a patriotic tech image Very different to what we discussed as tech place tech clash in recent years Another aspect is the window of opportunity for deep pocketed technology companies when it comes to acquisitions When financial markets will dry up or collapse in the course of the economic crisis to come These companies might be even more capable of buying any potentially competitive startup on the market Again, this is not only a possibility for expanding their market function for more and more services And of course a huge blow to competition It is also a hard punch for any political strategy to strengthen Something like a third way through digital capitalism by publicly funding innovation or startups How could one build? European tech champions when acquiring them becomes even easier than in recent years This power shift between the state and big technology companies is probably most obvious in the process of immediate crisis management itself When states hagglingly try to ramp up their data management skills in order to allocate resources bats, ventilators, labor etc. Palantir, AWS and others were right on the spot When the idea of managing the pandemic through contact tracing apps gained popularity Google and Apple rose to the occasion by delivering infrastructure, which seems to be without an alternative When fake news about the virus had to be stopped Facebook, Twitter and TikTok provided both possibilities to regulate the spread of false information through AI and advertising opportunities for example for the WHO When states invested in the development of vaccines or drugs Biotech companies such as Verily, part of Alphabet or Vir Biotechnology funded by Notorious SoftBank Were ready to offer their services and thus entered the promising health sector Are these only spotlights or are these signs of a particular development? If the later is true, we might be observing in real-time right now Not only how the corona crisis is further further strengthening the power of privatized markets Just like the dot-com boss bust and the crisis of 2008 and 2009 did We might actually be seeing a rapid acceleration of the states deepening structural dependency on leading digital corporations Science not only of big-text power over the economy or digital capitalism But indeed over the digital society and its state Thank you. I really missed the applause Yeah, me too definitely. It's funny. It's really funny sitting here with no applause at all So thank you a lot for this very condensed and insightful Talk you just gave us Philip. Thank you so much for that Let me start with something you Noted a little bit on the fly toward the end of your talk, which is the tracing app Everybody discusses now in Germany It seems as if the state Favored a more invasive model than the platforms like Google and Apple actually right that are favor an app that stores data Decentrally in devices and not in a central data bank Which is something the state favor to me that seems like some almost like a freak reversal of Discursive pattern as we had known it up until recently. What do you make of that? well, it's it's I'm in a way astonished just the way you are and Well, I mean the one of my one of the people working for me just drove me today That he asked himself whether this is a win for civic society or whether it is a win for Apple And we just don't know. I mean a lot of things Which are happening during this crisis. We really have to say how they play out I observed a little bit during the last weeks when it became clear that the centralized Version of the app was sort of gaining popularity among key players how parts of Say the the spectrum in Germany, which also has a certain stake into this whole situation Looked at it and it was really boiling there people were angry and they they wrote to everybody and I mean you could describe it it also in a way that Probably it wasn't mainly or only Apple It was also the outcry by certain actors who stand Themselves in a competitive field or within a conflict about the question how well digital Europe so to speak is supposed to look in the future and I mean I want to stay an optimist which is hard enough in this in these hard times so I might I might take it as a win for a say Decentralized sovereignty and individual rights based sort of Don't you basically saying that digital capitalism or some agents of digital capitalism sort of integrated critique That came from civic society in this case, which is a common thing capitalism keeps on doing that Is that a case of just that? Well, as I said, it's probably not a case of just that I mean we should not ascribe just all the agency to those companies We should have be on the lookout for and other agencies and if there are temporary alliances That doesn't mean that the effect of these alliances is generally a bad thing just because those companies took part But of course, I mean looking especially at the role at the at the fact that Google is in the mix there Of course, we should remain very very cautious as to what actually will be the the result of Of this app nobody really knows now we think now that the decentralized approach is favored But what it actually means will only be clear when the thing is there and we can observe it And that's just not the case yet Let me tap into your I'm sure key competencies of defining terms of our political economy and Sociology there in the term. I'm interested in referred to is the term labor When you we're talking about Extracting revenue up to 30% of digital capitalist agents from producers, but then you also the bulk consumers are not just consumers To a certain extent. They are also what? Laborers prosumers what how would you define that there? So if you're uploading our photos and you know contributing text and everything How would you define would you define that as labor at all or is it something else? no, I mean, I'm well aware of this controversy and And there's several positions one can have on that question. I was referring to something Much more basic all I wanted to say said you and me we are consumers when we buy things But we are also producers when we work we produce some sort of thing or service say in my case Education or books in your case events or you know radio that sort of stuff. So I wasn't even referring to the whole question of Pro-sumption and so on while I would never doubt the fact that this exists would I build a Critical approach to digital capitalism on the fact that user data can be used to sell advertising a lot No, I would not I would say the whole thing is a lot bigger than this question What are the male main goals of? Platforms is of call, you know in what you call digital capitalism is the time we spend online So do actual duration the continuous relationship is what Nicole tree called it also one of her speakers in this Scene is serious. There is a lot of talk of disruption when it comes to digitality But the consumer relation is the very very much the opposite of disruptive. It is not ruptured, but seemingly seamless You know, it's it's continuous and it's almost like a contract that never expires So to speak if we agree to the terms of service and and all this which you say This is a form of subjugation that does have neocolonial traits or neo feudal or which you still compare it to Mercantilism as you did in the latter part of your talk. I did compare to mercantilism when looking at sort of the Accumulation logic behind it. I mean, can we grab other terms to describe Other phenomena that are part of the broader thing that we call digital capitalism sure I was basically interested in the question. I would say What I was the question I was asking myself when thinking about digital capitalism was Which are the criteria that I can use in order to Be able to say something about whether this is actually Something particular right new is not really the point the point is whether it matters, right because it is special in a way and the the the category I sort of was Tending towards is the question of accumulation How accumulation is organized and when we look at those market like platforms, especially the big metal platforms I would argue that Accumulation is basically organized in the way trade monopolies are organized. They are the market for a certain type of Pro of a certain category of products a lot more today than the trade monopolies of the 17th century They make the prices for these products and their Their share is basically well, I argue in a certain In a certain wording of political economy, you could call it rents. They are extracting right especially the digital platforms because I mean, you know, we were talking about prosumers another big aspect of The debate around the digital economy is still a question of how those companies are actually making a profit from Products that are in the classical term not scars, right? Digital products themselves. They are not scars. So how do they do it? Well, they do it by Controlling excess to the market and then putting a price on participating in that market and While they can scale these Infra these infrastructures, which are the market without significant cost related to the profits they make You could actually say their infrastructure themselves is actually not you cannot describe them as a scarce infrastructure So then they make money from products that are not scars with infrastructure That is also not scars in comparison to their profits. That's rent seeking basically It's not like productive labor if you will that is or productivity profits from productivity Which is produced there Let us stay with the notion of proprietary markets in a minute, but I forgot to Tell you that you still can ask questions on the Slido app actually I think it's still open and it's being curated you can vote Questions up or down where you think they're interesting or a little less interesting So we're trying to get a little bit of diversity in the questions in a minute Well, when you compared mercantilism say roughly 18th century 17th century to Liberal forms of capitalism You sort of tied them together with the notion of monopolies, right? I mean they used to be monopolies that the state profited from in mercantilism and Now we have monopolies or proprietary markets as you call them that are completely Private so the state has basically No saying it and you even that in your book. I forgot to hold that into the camera when I introduced it to you You can tell a couple Capitalism you also refer to the venture capital, which is very global in all of those Actually mega platforms you talk about even the Chinese ones. It's a globalized venture capital that is in there You cannot talk of national agents there even if they're Chinese, right? So the state has no say in it so to speak. What are the options? Of the state in the future Well, that's that's the so the one million dollar question. Yeah, the one million euro question you should you could ask Well, I mean what I was trying to Say the discussion I wanted to open this evening is basically if The probable outcome of the crisis to come is a further further strengthening further concentration of power around these leading companies of Digital capitalism then what could be a broader strategy for an alternative, right? I mean there are for years. They have been different Ideas about options have been on the on the market, right have been discussed But you could you could try to draw it from the current situation as it accelerates so many of the Anyway, basic features of digital capitalism, right? So when you think about the gain in reputation of those companies what I called the probable rise of patriotic tech, right? I would argue that you do have Another dynamic as well, which is on the other side of the well market-state Relationship which are the reputation gains of the state of which we just do not know whether they will be stable or not And whether we considered them a good thing or a bad thing We probably consider then you probably consider them a good thing if you have trust in your state You probably consider them a bad thing if you don't right? but There are reputation gains of the state as it has shifted from say only claiming responsibility for late well for creating employment through creating economic growth to A situation where it is protecting the life of its citizens in the rawest sense, right? and this of course might create new sources of Legitimacy for the state right people after the crisis might look at the state and ask different questions when or ask the question what is a good state in a different way and It's actually something I'm looking at in a current project right now. We do not have any Results yet, but there is this reputation gain There are new sources of legitimacy which the state might simply have to serve and which then might clash with the logic of Accumulation that those companies try to Try to broaden as well and of course there is something you could call well a new swag of The state right this this whole thing about the I mean sort for the German audience Mako Söder right of all persons right Mako Söder was talking about a gigantic stimulus that we need for a Europe after the COVID-19 crisis I mean this is in a way not neoliberalism anymore. This is a political swag that we have not seen for decades and to me Well to be a bit personal. I'm 36 years old I do not really know much else than neoliberalism. I do not really know much else as political practice and Getting sort of a sense of Something happening that differs obviously at least up to this point how it might play out as a different story But up to this point it differs it makes me sort of well It is the it is the small grain of good that I see in this whole thing, right? So I mean the other day that read what's the point of Capitalism if socialism has to bail it out every ten years. That's just about what you refer to with Mako Söder I think in Bavaria and so to speak like let's take a little bit before we take the questions from the birds eye view Maybe from the public view most people of course I'm sure it's no different with you I spend a lot more times on platforms now during this crisis It almost seems like an old utopian You know the old utopian 90s notions of connection and belonging even are sort of resurfacing during this pandemic It's almost as if the internet had gotten good again like article in the Atlantic I think read I'm not trying to write an easy polemic here actually You know it is nice to be able to talk to your parents or maybe old and far away To talk with your friends have a drink with them. We know sort of On the other hand, you know the business model has not changed one bit What do you make of this situation in terms of reputation gain? Isn't that exactly what is happening right now that? Platforms that have been heavily critiqued before are sort of living or sort of gaining reputation Right now and are sort of forcing those alliances we were talking about maybe talked about the tracing app I mean there is this one thing that that you could if you blow it up a little right? Zoom is maybe a different story It worked of we know about all these problems zoom bombing and so on but just put that aside as well For a minute. It is a story of just spectacular new growth Which is not straight at least come a directly at least connected to? Other big platforms so you could describe it as a newcomer within this this type of economy and The point then is I would argue that you can imagine All the services we are consuming right now being embedded in a very different type of of Accumulation maybe no accumulation at all, but I mean also different types of accumulation if you are a friend of capitalism Okay, so there are a lot of separate ways to do that and the interesting thing Well, this is this is weird to to talk about your own idea as being interesting and so on but but the thing that I came up at actually after the book That I came up with actually after the book as being sort of an interesting aspect is that We might be able to learn from those market-like platforms in order to create More decentralized or may will say better govern more democratic type of digital economy Because those companies have taught us if you look for example at these mechanisms or strategies of control how to govern markets in a very very efficient way and If you look at problems With which will arise with the crisis to come the economic crisis to come But also with say the the broader crisis we're in Which is climate change then I mean I guess most people would agree that this won't work without governing markets So what you could you could even argue that when you look at the commercial internet you see a blueprint for a world where the governance of markets From which we can draw an idea of how the governance of markets could work and All we need to do all we need to do right, but all we need to do is to attach that to other Criteria to other purposes that matter right so They're also I would say once The state whatever this state is Takes a bigger part in this whole type of whole process of I'm economic restructuring There is also reason for optimism because it might learn how to govern markets attached to democratic goals So if platforms are markets for themselves if they're proprietary markets as you argued it They might be still very hard to govern right in the present tense because there was there was a study There was a paper actually from Humboldt Institute for internet and society into internet policy review at the end of March I think beginning of April that said how platform governance is really frail at the moment because they have to be you know send people home and very basic level and They're actually delegating a lot of governance of their platforms to AI to artificial intelligence and a lot of mistakes happen So people who have stoned masks in the US You know have been punished or removed from certain sites because it was thought to be a rip-off or Selling medical equipment, which wasn't medical and so forth So a lot of mistakes have happened and we're not even talking about hate speech and and conspiracy theories and all that So platform governance the paper at least argued is especially frame Frail weak so to speak at this very moment So this must be a very tough future to actually govern those platforms at the time in there Some of them are exponentially growing almost Yeah, well, but I don't know if it is I mean we will see how it plays out the point. I'm making is is not that All this will happen by itself and just like that That's not the point the point that I'm making is that we are seeing the sort of outlines of a stronger conflict emerging and It might just be that this conflict between the state which has to Cater to new needs for legitimacy for its citizens between this state and between Big tech which delivers the infrastructure, which is basically saying well these look at the Corolla app this is the cheap solution to social distancing take it and and and go ahead and this conflict is one that People can engage in now and the corona app the the contact tracing app We're talking about is actually the way we talked about sort of was to understand it as an example of this sort of conflict Which didn't so far seems not to have had the worst outcome, right? so This is this is the the only point I'm making and I Would argue that we have well would I argue that it is more probable That we get a stronger public governance of the internet and this is a good thing No, I would probably argue that well as I did in my presentation that the opposite outcome is more probable but also there is a new dynamic in this whole Conflict conflict situation which we need to observe and I'd say if you're an activist you need to engage in it, right? This is the time to take questions I think I hope there are any Christian Grau Vogel from Humboldt Institute for Internet And society will read them out for us. Is there anything on slide or Christian? Yes, hello. Good evening. I'm waiting for the signal. Okay. Yes They're actually a lot of questions on side. Oh, we try to cluster them a bit Because we obviously can't answer or ask all the question, but we try to at least ask a couple of questions. So We start with the questions about Which area of civic life is most vulnerable to digital capitalism and surveillance? Is it health politics? That was a top voted question Which one is more vulnerable? Which area of civic life is most Vulnerable to digital capitalism and surveillance. Is it health or politics or maybe even another sector? Well, the way I see it politics has already been Included into this dynamic to a very large extent. So well, then again, the question is what is politics, but say what we consider as this whole framework of what this whole process of deliberation between Media citizens parties and so on. This is integrated heavily through social media and Advertising and so on and into this process health so far is as our most Public services or public goods a place or an area where those companies have tried to expand strongly for well for a rather long time actually and a big a big risk in this crisis Is that a lot of things that you know, we're meeting a lot of Stop signs along the way and therefore took forever Making it possible to build up other alternatives are or or or well lasting stop signs Might now just fall very quickly as well as the example with AWS and Palantir goes Which just went very very quickly and now they're in and we see how sticky they are right? so of Course we are starting or there is well There is a Grab of those companies for What we would consider public goods or in a more recent term the foundational economy within our broader economy and Health and politics are one part mobility is another part and it's an interesting it's an interesting area Where you can also sort of observe What I called learning from this whole proprietary markets logic I mean, there are all over Europe in bigger cities There are attempts at building public meta platforms for urban transport starting with Starting with the public transport Which is of course like the big heavyweight inside this this market and then connecting other private services e-scooters Shari share bikes and so on into these platforms and you could probably Describe at least I did so my impression is that this market for example is one where those public platforms are Competing well with who I guess with Google Maps right people use Google Maps if they want to have what you call intermodal types of Mobility but this battle or this conflict at least is not lost yet and it's an example of how the public or well public administrations take on this logic of proprietary markets and try to Attach it to other purposes or other goals like say safety and Safety of distribution for sorghum That sort of stuff and to democratic governance in a way right so this might be the model that we Want to see pop up and more and more of this these markets within the foundational economy I have a next question, which is probably well in line with which what you just said the question is about the power and the thematic fuel of power Do you think the power of platforms can still be regulated at all? And how would you rate the risk of platforms digitally digitally colonizing especially the global house? Global South Can platforms be regulated at all? Yes, of course they can I mean it's it's a question of power And this is why again I'd say the new sorry for this the term the new swag of the state that we are seeing right now is a reason for Optimism at least if you live in a country where you have a certain confidence a certain trust in your state right because See a lot of if you look at it from a political economies Perspective a lot of pieces are moving right now Those moving pieces are not only the questions of platform governance. It is for example the questions of how will a post Covid global economy look in terms of trade right when everybody's talking about Renationalizing certain or opening certain production spaces within the nation state in order to have a safe access to certain Equipment and so on this these are all things that really Sort of attack the neoliberal core of Free trade agreements and so on and once this piece is moving the piece to regulate Bigger platforms say at least in Europe is moving as well because once you're out of the free trade a Jacket in a way You can you can do things that you could not do before you know I mean you you do not we do not have a digital tax and certain platform regulations in Europe Because German automakers wanted to sell and still want to sell their cars to to the states Say because these pieces are moving this option one at one point is taking off the table Well, what stops us then from doing that the I mean it's it's no secret that the The the the white books the plans for that sort of stuff are in Inside the desks of public administrations. It's not something we still need to figure out how to do We just need to do it and the the power framework We were in so far is one that prohibited us from doing it in a way If you can see you could argue for good reasons if you are living in Germany and profiting from an export-oriented model and so on right Um But yeah, as I said these these pieces might moving and well I cannot really answer that questions in a you know final way I can only say it's isn't it interesting that those pieces are moving now I think it's it's terribly interesting and it will be very and very curious What the outcome will be? So it's not about a lack of idea it's about a you know a question of power as you said at the beginning of your answer Christian will be maybe could do is just post a couple of questions together or three and then see if he can Bind everything together like he so brilliantly has done in the last 20 minutes of this Recession try to cluster them a bit. So there was question regarding data Regarding the assumption of new digital capitalism. How important is the monetary exploitation of behavioral data in the overall economy? Then there was question regarding alternative platforms or there were a couple of questions we selected one One was Would you say destroying the big companies monopoly on data is an option and how could this be done? Sorry, could you repeat that? Yes? Do platform sorry destroying the monopolies would you say destroying the big companies? Monopoly on data is an option and how could this be done and Then there have been a couple of questions on our personal role in digital capitalism We're both Rated to quite high. So we will post both One was what is the role of tech? practitioners software developers and engineers in addressing the crisis of digital capitalism and What is the role or what should the role of consumers be now? Should we even call us just consumers? We are also workers producers users citizens Okay The first question I didn't really quite understand which is why we are because we're sitting quite far from each other And you probably hear him a lot better than I do But I repeat these were brilliant questions But maybe if I maybe I touch it if I don't you you just read it again to me So I'm alternative platforms destroy data monopolies Yes, I think it is possible. I mean also for that sort of stuff the policy approaches Are there they just haven't been used yet, right? This is this is this is the way I would describe This situation I cannot go into detail Also, because it's not my primary primary like there might be people a lot more competent about that than me But I Just want to sort of Make one Reference to it or at least ask a question because there is one thing about this whole and opening or breaking the the data monopolies This particular way of talking about breaking the up the monopolies Which just I I sort of I never could figure out myself. I mean There is this whole idea that once you open up the data pools It will unleash let's say you force big tech companies to share their data Open-source it and so on That this will unleash innovation In a way that we have not seen before My whole approach to digital capitalism is one that doesn't really buy into the narrative of innovation. I mean if you look at it from a very sort of simple and Yeah, from a very simple Perspective you could say that the big innovations Of the though at least the big tech companies are innovations in consumption They have been rationalizing consumption to an extent out beating competition by lowering prices and so on to an extent that that is just has Been unimaginable before right, but is this really what we consider to be innovation? And if this is what those companies can do can we really argue or can we should we really rely on our hope that Just opening up these data pools will then unleash good innovation. Whatever that is supposed to mean I mean not to say that this is not possible And that this would not be something to to strive for but I mean we we also have to be careful in Reproducing the narratives of those companies themselves because then we just be basically bought their narratives, right? Which is for example, and this is another point about this whole question of of data monopolies that their Whole power is based on data Which is in a way true, but say the soup of story of surveillance capitalism is one well to me it always reads like Sort of a very big book about online advertising Right the other use cases for this sort of data Economy stuff they it gets very quickly gets very very thin and a lot of it is hope Right it is just and it's hope that is sort of from a mixed mixed discourse of consultancy firms those tech companies themselves and other actors, and I just I just I just don't buy it say completely so My again my my basic point here to make is and maybe this touches the whole question the whole first question Which was in a way about money, right? And The the real resource which has made those companies great or great well huge That has been which has been neglected might not be data it might be money It might be money. It might be the fact that they can buy every competitor on the market Right this might be the key to their success and the fact that they grew so big especially after the crisis of 2008 Might have something to do with the fact that the global money supply was doubling between 2008 and 2017 Money just wasn't a scarce resource, right? I mean, this is a whole a very much more conventional Capitalism like story of this whole field which to me at least sounds Rather plausible well this whole data Story and has a lot of problems another problem of this of this story is for example that It it seems to be like again We are choosing say the easy way and the easy way is we want to have more open data So let's put all the public make all the public data open data first right have all these open data initiatives within the cities and so on and so on and I I never can wrap my head around how this should actually not profit Big tech companies a lot more than anybody else Because they if they if it is true that all their power is based on data, right? It should be it should be the case that they are a lot more capital capable than other companies to then sort of profit from this Public data, so why should we throw it at them? If data is the new, you know Currency of power we should use it strategically say in order to and this Is part of this whole alternative platforms question in a way that it It helps the platforms that are in the public's interest and it doesn't help those who aren't Should I go on or should or do you want to intervene? I mean I didn't even touch the third question But I can I mean should I repose it or do you still I do you grab your mic? I don't know if you want to know if you want to go on answering them. Sure. So last question is the one About the role of practitioners. I mean there are so many Very just great and sympathetic Initiatives within the broader like not big tech type of digital economy and The person who asked the question might be a lot better in in answering it than I am The other half of the question was about this whole how to How to make sense of us being consumers and producers and so on At the same time the way I make sense of it and look when looking at digital capitalism is Is very simple We come from a we come from a tradition in which Say after the Second World War in a way also before we have seen Different faces or steps in the expansion of rights, right? First you have political rights and so on later you had social rights Then you had rights at work and so on and the only type of rights Right rights are always attached to citizens the only type of rights that has been expanding in neoliberalism While the other ones were sort of scaled down or at least stopped expanding were the rights of consumers right so people sort of learn to understand themselves as consumers and they sort of Were socialized in doing so as also by those platforms, right? Because they were only addressed as consumers even when we consume news today We are addressed in the logic of online advertising in in many situations, right? So When you then take into account my footnote, right, which was that In a way, this is if you take it as a system as an emerging system This is all rather bad news for labor right because the whole system is based on Extracting I say 30% of revenues from the side of labor and give it to the market owners who put it on their bank accounts, right? Then what you would see is an alliance of capital and consumers Against labor that would be the current situation now. You cannot tell people which is sort of something I've been well say in the political spectrum in Germany when there have been ideas of well Is there is there a possibility to to create sort of? Public legitimacy by taking on big tech Right and I would I would I was always arguing no there isn't there isn't because you cannot in a situation Where wages for example have been stagnating in many countries in the OECD world for decades and the only The companies who have been expanding have been companies that have Subsidized consumption, right? You cannot sell to people that they should give all this stuff up while their wages don't increase, right? So if this is not the way out sort of if this social conflict is is in a situation of It's blocked in a way, right? then We have to bring back another figure and this figure that is not inside the equation and that is the citizen, right? Which is I why I would argue like the questions do in a way That the question of the of democracy is the one that is much easier To politicize than the question of capitalism within this whole framework Maybe we have one last questions before I would add the very last one like we usually do here In this series and wrap this up for everybody to have dinner and as I said It's going to be a little shorter than usually, but at this time for one more audience questions from Slido I think please Christian. I'm coming back to the questions of platforms because a lot of people post questions of platforms and alternatives platforms models, so One question was and do platforms based on differentiation and value co-creation instead of standardization and higher value Capture have any chance to survive in the market? Well, they might have if they have a certain niche Which then is always the question of when will other bigger tech companies take on that niche and catch an interest in that Who's probably at the point when when it gets sort of when it gets really going, right? Which is that or they might be able to survive when they when they have a certain type of protection, right? Which is again where you have to look at all the moving pieces in a way to get an idea about what that sort of protection might be and of course the idea I You might have and I'm having as well as that a good place to start might be Everything that we consider to be in one way or another public goods Why first because it's the thing those companies are going for now and secondly there is sort of a Public a political and public situation where people might say well, this is something we should Better keep under public control, right? So where would I start I would start with this sort of stuff at where where I could expect some sort of support from the public Democratic side when Sort of lobbying hard enough for it, right? I mean, this is of course also political struggle and This would be the foundational economy Now as a very last question of Philip It seems to me that this historical trajectory is sort of central to your argument, right? If you're comparing what you call digital capitalism to earlier forms of capitalism pre-liberal forms of capitalism Mercantilism so if you take a look how Merrick mercantilism Started to end the beginning of the end of mercantilism was we could start with the French Revolution We could then go on to the bourgeois revolutions and you know in mid 19th century and of course unions and Workers movements and all that so it took a very long time to sort of disrupt that Modes of capitalism that you are comparing now with current forms of digital capitalism that are sort of similar except Concerning the role of the state which is pretty much absent in current digital capitalism It wasn't in mercantilism because it profited from its businesses So what do you think what would be the beginning of an end? I mean is a historical comparison actually sensible even to start with or what could we learn so to speak from that Historical comparison well not to be misunderstood. I'm of course. I am for the expansion of Workers rights and so on. This is all very important people should engage in that and I also like to observe the outcome later on as as an academic but I mean thinking about it from Yeah, well, is there something like an well, there is something like an ontological aspect to political economy as well and From that sort of perspective you would probably say that mercantilism ended by the introduction of productivity increases Once it was possible sort of it overcame itself because the goal was to protect National economies to build them up so they were not crushed by competition. So you had to control trade and Then you had this productivity explosion, which sort of made for a certain amount of time made trade trade less important to say economic growth and the political legitimacy that was connected to Economic growth now. What would that mean for your question, right? If you if you frame it that way It would mean that we That the best way out would be one where Trade just isn't so important anymore, right? for for the for the reproduction of An economy and that would probably an economy which grows a lot more than the ones We've lived in for the last say 30 years where we had secular stagnation and so on Now I do not at all believe in the Huge productivity potential of the technologies we talk about when we talk about digitalization and so on I just I well I just don't see the data like on on on that actually Happening so if that exit is blocked I would argue we might want to look for another exit and this other exit would not be well How could everybody participate in a better way in a system? That is only bait that is basically Aimed at rent seeking, right? I mean, this is a question. We can ask in the in the middle sort of in a mid Not like the the very long perspective. We should probably rather ask If productivity increases were the basis for the industrial society What would be the basis for a digital society that we want to live in, right? And then again, I Would I'm a very empirical guy in a way and Well, I say this often enough, but I have a son who is six years old and before corona He loved to go to Fridays for future, right? So there you have this whole idea of a different type of wealth a different type of richness of society Which a lot of people can identify with why not use that instead of sort of trying to solve the situation Through productivity or mercantilism Is this what you mean at the very end of your book actually when you talk of now? This is my translation. So forgive me When you addressed the question of a society of digital rights the central Conflict you write of a future counter movement would lie in the Politization of individual and collective freedom. Is that what you just referred to with Fridays for future as it is one way of Spelling out what individual and collective freedom means. Yes when my son goes to Fridays for future And he feels like part of a movement. That's not individual freedom being able to go there might be individual freedom but being there and Sort of being fired up. That's collective freedom. And of course I would argue that This is something that neoliberalism has targeted and tried to destroy and this is something we Should probably rediscover and or are already rediscovering obviously Thank you so much for your thoughts on digital capitalism Philip stop a round of applause for him Back home and in here in the theater. Thank you. How? Just see you in I think the beginning. No the end of May, right? What was that Christian in four weeks four weeks from now. We're continuing this series. So have a good night. Just