Against Commodification: The University, Cognitive Capitalism and Emergent Technologies
Date
2012
Authors
Hall, Richard
Stahl, Bernd Carsten, 1968-
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
ISSN
1726-670X
DOI
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Salzburg
Peer reviewed
Yes
Abstract
This paper investigates how four specific emergent technologies, namely affective computing, augmented reality, cloud-based systems, and human machine symbiosis, demonstrate how technological innovation nurtured inside the University is commodified and fetishised under cognitive capitalism or immaterial labour, and how it thereby further enables capital to reproduce itself across the social factory. Marx’s critique of technologies, through their connection to nature, production, social relations and mental conceptions, and in direct relation to the labour process, demonstrates how capital utilises emergent technologies to incorporate labour further into its self-valorisation process as labour-power. The University life-world that includes research and development is a critical domain in which to site Marx's structural technological critique, and it is argued that this enables a critique of the public development and deployment of these technologies to reveal them as a fetishised force of production, in order to re-politicise activity between students, teachers and the public.
Description
Keywords
University, Emergent Technology, Academic Activism, Commodification, Cognitive Capitalism
Citation
Hall, R. and Stahl, B. (2012) Against Commodification: The University, Cognitive Capitalism and Emergent Technologies. Triple-C: Cognition, communication and co-operation, 10 (2), pp. 184-202
Research Institute
Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility (CCSR)
Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA)
Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA)