[p2p-research] ?? trends ? : "Corporate Dropouts" towards Open diy ? ... ?!

[Michel Bauwens]

2009/10/14 Nathan Cravens <knuggy at gmail.com>

> Hello Dante,
>
>
> *
>> *
>> *And how this compares or interacts with current globalized cognitive
>> capitalism.*
>>
>
> What's cognitive capitalism dere partner? I just sold your entire mind
> wholesale to the highest bidder, so never mind, its no longer yours to use
> to describe cognitive capitalism.
>
>
>> *
>> *
>>
>>
on cognitive capitalism, http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism

Definition

*This interpretation stresses that we are in a third phase of capitalism,
where the accumulation is centered on immaterial assets.* It follows the
earlier phases of mercantile and industrial capitalism.

Cognitive capitalism theorists believe that it is centered around the
accumulation of immaterial assets, especially related to the information
core of products, which are protected through Intellectual Property Rights,
i.e. legal means such as patents. These patents, as they are used by brands,
in sectors such as pharma, agribusiness and software (Microsoft), then allow
for the creation of a surplus value resulting from monopolistic rents. The
contradiction of cognitive capitalism is that the products themselves are
generally cheap to produce, so they have to be kept in a state of artificial
scarcity through IP protection. Cognitive capitalism is associated with the
process of a private appropriation of the Information
Commons<http://p2pfoundation.net/Information_Commons>.


For related interpretations, see the theory of Vectoral capitalism, which
sees the Hacker Class <http://p2pfoundation.net/Hacker_Class>, which
produces use value but cannot realize its exchange value because it doesn't
own the vectors of information (the means of distribution such as mass
media), pitted against the Vectoral
Class<http://p2pfoundation.net/Vectoral_Class>,
which does own the vectors.

Finally, the interpretation of Netarchical
Capitalism<http://p2pfoundation.net/Netarchical_Capitalism>,
argues that because of the distribution of the means of production
(networked computer), which undermines both the monopolies of cognitive
capitalists (through the creation of an Information
Commons<http://p2pfoundation.net/Information_Commons>,
and the Vectoral Class <http://p2pfoundation.net/Vectoral_Class> (through
the distributed nature of the internet), is paving the way for netarchical
capitalists, who enable, but also own, the participatory platforms.


 [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism?title=Cognitive_Capitalism&action=edit&section=2>
] Characteristics

Summarized by Ed Emery:

"We can offer the following elements towards a definition of cognitive
capitalism:

(a) The production of wealth is no longer based solely and exclusively on
material production but is based increasingly on immaterial elements, in
other words on raw materials that are intangible and difficult to measure
and quantify, deriving directly from employment of the relational, affective
and cerebral faculties of human beings.

(b) The production of wealth is no longer based on a standardised and
homogenous models for the organisation of the labour process regardless of
the types of good produced. Production in cognitive capitalism takes place
through a wide variety of labour-process models made possible by the
development of new technologies of linguistic communication and
transportation, and particularly characterised by forms of networking.

As a result of this restructuring of labour processes the traditional
unilateral hierarchical form of the factory gradually comes to be replaced
by hierarchical structures that are organised territorially via producer
chains of sub-contracting suppliers, characterised by cooperation and/or
command;

(c) The way in which work is done alters both quantitatively and
qualitatively. In the material conditions of labour there is a marked
increase in working hours. Often there is also a piling-on of additional
tasks, a tendency for the the separation between work time and life time to
disappear, and a greater individualisation of work relations. Moreover the
nature of work itself comes to involve more and more elements of
immateriality. Relational activities, communicational activities and brain
activity becomes increasingly present and important. These activities
require training, skills and attention: we move beyond the separation
between mind and brawn typical of Taylorised work.

(d) The subjection of the worker within the production process is no longer
imposed in disciplinary fashion by direct command (foremen etc); most of the
time it is introjected and developed through forms of conditioning and
social control. Individualised contractual relations are the order of the
day, and this tends to introduce individual competitiveness into people's
working behaviours.

(e) The role of knowledge becomes fundamental. To the creation of value
through material production is added the creation of value through the
production of knowledge. Cognitive capitalism means that the production of
wealth takes place increasingly through knowledge, through the use of those
faculties of labour that are defined by cognitive activity (cognitive
labour), in other words principally through immaterial cerebral and
relational activities.

(f) Precisely because of its individual nature, cognitive labour demands a
high degree of relational activity, as the instrument for the transmission
and decodification of its own brain activity and accumulated knowledges:

Cognitive abilities and relational activities are two faces of the same coin
and can be regarded as indivisble. They are the basis of General
Intellect<http://p2pfoundation.net/General_Intellect>,
in other words the form of diffuse intellectuality which Marx discusses in
his Grundrisse.

(g) Cognitive capitalism is also necessarily a networked reality. In other
words it is not linear, and the hierarchies which it develops operate within
the individual nodes, and between the various nodes, of the network."



 [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism?title=Cognitive_Capitalism&action=edit&section=3>
] Discussion [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism?title=Cognitive_Capitalism&action=edit&section=4>
] Enzo Rullani

Summarized by Matteo Pasquinelli, in: The Ideology of Free Culture and the
Grammar of Sabotage<http://www.rekombinant.org/docs/Ideology-of-Free-Culture.pdf>:


"The digital revolution made the reproduction of immaterial objects easier,
faster, ubiquitous and almost free. But as the Italian economist Enzo
Rullani points out, within cognitive capitalism, "proprietary logic does not
disappear but has to subordinate itself to the law of diffusion."
Intellectual property (and so Rent <http://p2pfoundation.net/Rent>) is no
longer based on space and objects but on time and speed. Apart from
copyright there are many other modes to extract rent. In his book Economia
della conoscenza Rullani writes that cognitive products easy to reproduce
have to start a process of diffusion as soon as possible in order to
maintain control over it. As an entropic tendency affects any cognitive
product, it is not recommended to invest on a static proprietary rent. More
specifically there is a rent produced on the multiplication of the uses and
a rent produced on the monopoly of a secret. Two opposite strategies: the
former is recommended for cultural products like music, the latter for
patents. Rullani is inclined to suggest that free multiplication is a vital
strategy within cognitive capitalism, as the value of knowledge is fragile
and tends to decline. Immaterial commodities (that populate any spectacular,
symbolic, affective, cognitive space) seem to suffer of a strong entropic
decay of meaning. At the end of the curve of diffusion a banal destiny is
waiting for any meme, especially in today's emotional market that constantly
tries to sell unique and exclusive experiences.

For Rullani the value of a knowledge (extensively of any cognitive product,
artwork, brand, information) is given by the composition of three drivers:
the value of its performance and application (v); the number of its
multiplications and replica (n); the sharing rate of the value among the
people involved in the process (p). Knowledge is successful when it becomes
self-propulsive and pushes all the three drivers: 1) maximising the value,
2) multiplying effectively, 3) sharing the value that is produced. Of course
in a dynamic scenario a compromise between the three forces is necessary, as
they are alternative and competitive to each other. If one driver improves,
the others get worse. Rullani's model is fascinating precisely because
intellectual property has no central role in extracting surplus. In other
words the rent is applied strategically and dynamically along the three
drivers, along different regimes of intellectual property. Knowledge is
therefore projected into a less fictional cyberspace, a sort of invisible
landscape where cognitive competition should be described along new
space-time coordinates. Rullani describe his model as 3D but actually it is
4-dimensional as it runs especially along time.

The dynamic model provided by Rullani is more interesting than for instance
Benkler's plain notion of "social production" but it is not yet employed by
radical criticism and activism. What is clear and important in his
perspective is also that the material can not be replaced by the immaterial
despite the contemporary hypertrophy of signs and digital enthusiasm. There
is a general misunderstanding about cognitive economy as an autonomous and
virtuous space. On the contrary, Rullani points out that knowledge exists
only through material vectors. The nodal point is the friction between the
free reproducibility of knowledge and the non-reproducibility of the
material. The immaterial generates value only if it grants meaning to a
material process. A music CD for example has to be physically produced and
physically consumed. We need our body and especially our time to produce and
consume music. And when the CD vector is dematerialised thanks to the
evolution of digital media into P2P networks, the body of the artist has to
be engaged in a stronger competition. Have digital media galvanised more
competition or more cooperation? An apt question for today's internet
criticism." (http://www.rekombinant.org/docs/Ideology-of-Free-Culture.pdf)


 [edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism?title=Cognitive_Capitalism&action=edit&section=5>
] More Information

   1. Check of P2P Foundation blog
archive<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?cat=37>for more articles on
cognitive capitalism.
   2. *Self-organisation and cooperation in cognitive capitalism*, special
   issue of *Solaris* magazine, at
   http://biblio-fr.info.unicaen.fr/bnum/jelec/Solaris/d05/5introduction.html,
   http://biblio-fr.info.unicaen.fr/bnum/jelec/Solaris/d05/5link-pezet.html
   3. A critique of the thesis by Siliva Federici and George Caffentzis, at
   http://www.commoner.org.uk/12federicicaffentz.pdf

[edit<http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism?title=Cognitive_Capitalism&action=edit&section=6>
] Key English-language Books to Read

*The theory of cognitive capitalism has its roots in mostly French and
Italian thinkers. Therefore, we are able to present a number of specific
books in French, but English books on the subject are less precise in regard
of this concept.*


Book in progress by Adam Arvidsson: The Ethical Economy Book
Project<http://p2pfoundation.net/Ethical_Economy_Book_Project>


*Jeremy Rifkin. The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where
all of Life is a Paid-For
Experience<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=p2pfoundation-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F1585420824%2Fqid%3D1144555641%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_b_2_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D283155>
*

(what if the new capitalism produced a new kind of feudalism? Indeed, as
products are increasingly replaced by immaterial experiences, and are
licensed rather than sold, then this means that consumers will no longer
‘own’ anything, merely a right to use it, and that those without means will
be excluded from access to these networks)

*Nick Dyer-Whitheford.
Cyber-Marx<http://p2pfoundation.net/Cognitive_Capitalism?title=Cyber-Marx&action=edit&redlink=1>,
cycles and circuits of struggle in High-Technology
Capitalism<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=p2pfoundation-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0252024796%2Fqid%3D1144555965%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D283155>.
Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1999.*

(“well-researched overview on contemporary Marxist responses to the
information age" - Soderbergh copyleft essay)


*Class Warfare in the Information
Age<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=p2pfoundation-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0312177585%2Fqid%3D1144556116%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D283155>.
Michael Perelman. Palgrave.*

(“shows how class conflict remains a contemporary issue")


*The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New
Capitalism<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=p2pfoundation-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0393319873%2Fqid%3D1144556327%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_bbs_b_2_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%26v%3Dglance%26n%3D283155>.
By Richard Sennett. Norton & Co, 1998.*

(vignettes which show the contradictions inherent in the postfordist model
of capitalism, and the high personal price to be paid by its employees /
French: “Le Travail sans Qualite", Albin Michel, 2000)
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