1) Dyer-Witherford uses a “value-vortex” metaphor to illustrate the workings of digital capitalism, and the creation of value within the system.
“The vertical and horizontal vectors of production and circulation provide the basic dynamic of the value vortex. Its moving force field is, however, unstable. In production, the upward siphoning off of value tends towards a downward pressure on wages, but in circulation, holding down wages limits consumption. At the same time (…) the machinic intensification of value extraction reduces the quantities of living labour transformed into surplus value, undoing the basic energy transfer that forms the vortex”
How does Dyer-Witherford’s analogy of value compare to Marx’s? Is he describing a similar process to that in “The Fragment of Machines”? Or has he surpassed this idea to create a less linear, but more unstable model of digital capitalism?
2) In the Chapter “Mobile”, Dyer-Witherford details the dual character of the mobile phone in lesser-developed countries. They both provide the majority of increasingly “proletarianized” work, but also are increasingly required to obtain work in an unstable working environment. (e.g. he references excerpts from journal Sanhati on pg. 113)
How does a product becoming a necessity (one needed to obtain employment) affect its status as a commodity?
Does this blur the line between worker and consumer?
3) “Washing around the basis of the app economy is, however, a sea of aspirant independents, small start-ups, and their employees, for whom software development, far from providing a secure livelihood, rather offers yet another variant on the themes of precarious, intermittent, unprotected and low-wage work that have come to characterize cybernetic capital.” (176)
Is the idea of “digital entrepreneur” a gateway from the “Cyber-proletariat” to the “Cyber-Bourgeoise”? Do two such rigid categories exist?
What is the role of unpaid workers in digital industries (e.g. new app developers not yet employed by corporations but still creating content)?
4) In “The Fragment on Machines”, Marx envisions technological development leading to capitalism’s demise, as Dyer- Witherford references on pg.183. Will this demise be down to the concept of “cyber-revolution” Dyer-Witherford refers to in his opening chapter, so that technology produces a counter-culture? In the “Fragment on Machines”, Marx refers to workers as only the “conscious linkages” between machines, with cyber technology increasingly providing a kind of consciousness.
Will demise come from the decreasing need for human interaction in production?