platform capitalism
You might also be aware that all this is delivered by means of “persuasive design”—an umbrella term for an armory of psychological techniques borrowed directly from the designers of casino slot machines, for the express purpose of encouraging compulsive behavior. One example among hundreds is the ubiquitous drag-down-to-refresh gesture, which keeps... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.
Brett Scott • Tech Doesn’t Make Our Lives Easier. It Makes Them Faster
For the consumers are no longer just buyers, they are also raw resources to be mined—for attention, data, and the spending of cash that comes from time on site and the continuing relationship. Perhaps the model is best described this way: You own a population first, then harvest it later.
Tim Wu • The Age of Extraction
Early Amazon held out a real prospect of changing class dynamics in the United States, by enriching an entrepreneurial sector of small businesses across the nation. But the creation of a class of independent businesses means less if they are dependent upon a far larger business. They become a dependent class, and at its worst, can end up in a
... See moreTim Wu • The Age of Extraction
But from the beginning, the Internet’s design distributed power and resources to those at the “ends” of the network, that is, those on the network, as opposed to the owner of the network itself. It was, in its way, a modest design that relied on the passive virtues of connection and empowering others.
Tim Wu • The Age of Extraction
“platformization.” By that I mean the creation, within an existing industry, of a platform that made a new class of businesses and products possible. The computing industry became platformized, and all those new companies were writing “to the platform.” That created, in effect, an industry where none existed before.
Tim Wu • The Age of Extraction
Underlying the Internet and the city square is the same deceptively simple but actually brilliant idea, which is to be as neutral as possible between uses.
Tim Wu • The Age of Extraction
the most basic function of the platform is to enable mutually beneficial transactions—and thereby generate wealth or the satisfaction of human wants and needs.
Tim Wu • The Age of Extraction
its power does not lie in production but rather in catalysis. It resides in the hosting of economic activity and the extraction of value, including the harvesting of specialized assets like data and human attention.