Technopolitics
Technopolitics in a Nutshell: Commented Reading List on Key Categories
This article presents in overview form some of the key categories of Technopolitics together with essential reading. Technopolitics is a project that has began as a collaboration between Brian Holmes and me on these pages in 2010. Since 2011 a Technopolitics working group exists in Vienna. There is a lot of additional material which you can find spread out over Thenextlayer, so I thought for newcomers its time to collect a few basic references.
Contradictions of a Tiger Cub, Part I
Video sequence taken during recent Vietnam trip. What strikes me is the contradicition between Vietnam's apparent dynamism, allegedly having joined the club of fast growing economies as a 'tiger cub' - in reference to the other Asian 'tiger economies' such as Taiwan, South Korea or Thailand - while at the same time this catching up modernisation process starts from a very low level.
Check out this river view of a village between Can Tho and Cai Be, in the Mekong delta.
Periodization, again
Here's the difficulty I have with Kondratiev waves: it really seems to take two waves to create a complete cycle. What Perez calls a "technological style" actually unfolds over two Kondratiev waves. Between the two there is a regulation crisis with some kind of "successful" resolution (although it is very hard to call WWII "successful"); and then at the end, a kind of chaotic period during which the technological style begins to change.
BLOODY TAYLORISM AND COGNITIVE CAPITAL
This text highlights relationships between different regimes of labour and how they are exploited by capital, in the context of textiles and clothes. Global inequalities are being exploited through the help of ICT and the general drive to labour saving techniques. What makes matters worse is that those participating as producers and consumers remain invisible to each other.
So what will the 6th Kondratiev look like?
Industrial investment at the end of the Great Recession will likely be in the new generation of robots, used in both manufacturing and distribution.