The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism
(Part of the Thought in the Act Series)
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Book Overview
In The World Computer Jonathan Beller forcefully demonstrates that the history of commodification generates information itself. Out of the omnipresent calculus imposed by commodification, information emerges historically as a new money form. Investigating its subsequent financialization of daily life and colonization of semiotics, Beller situates the development of myriad systems for quantifying the value of people, objects, and affects as endemic to racial capitalism and computation. Built on oppression and genocide, capital and its technical result as computation manifest as racial formations, as do the machines and software of social mediation that feed racial capitalism and run on social difference. Algorithms, derived from for-profit management strategies, conscript all forms of expression--language, image, music, communication--into the calculus of capital such that even protest may turn a profit. Computational media function for the purpose of extraction rather than ameliorating global crises, and financialize every expressive act, converting each utterance into a wager. Repairing this ecology of exploitation, Beller contends, requires decolonizing information and money, and the scripting of futures wagered by the cultural legacies and claims of those in struggle.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1478011165
ISBN13:9781478011163
Release Date:February 2021
Publisher:Duke University Press
Length:352 Pages
Weight:1.04 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
Related Subjects
Philosophy Political Science Politics & Social Sciences Social Science Social SciencesCustomer Reviews
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