The concept of information capitalism is not something new, yet it would be necessary to make this issue an objective policy. This is something that is crucial for China's future development, and it should be something that must be executed and responded.
Information capitalism, or digital capitalism, was a concept first proposed by American communication political economist Dan Schiller in the late 1990s in Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System, a book he authored that attracted academic attention and raised discussions. Since then, he has also written the book Digital Depression: Information Technology and Economic Crisis, in which he pointed out more clearly that informational capitalism is one of the stages of capitalism. At this stage, the capitalist system is more prone to bring up information and communication technology-intensive industries.
Compared with the concept of network society proposed by Manuel Castelles, Schiller's digital capitalism emphasizes on the importance of communication and information that can gradually become a new support point for the evolution of the capitalist political economic structure. It should be said that these theories are all heavily related to the new forms of production of the network society. It is believed that in historical process, capital is prioritized in the tying up of connections to proprietary networks. Through the computer network that supports the modern and cooperative production mechanism, the independent division of labor is combined with a collective production cooperation, allowing it to directly interact with the more advanced labor process. Therefore, why should capital be closely integrated with information technology? Schiller and Castelles believe that the enthusiasm of capital for information technology can be partly reflected in the embodiment of information technology as the core competitiveness of commercial success in the 21st century. What that means is, when capital and information are integrated, it would form a new production, a new society and new capitalism.
Buzzwords often raise much excitement and energy among the Chinese academia, and there are little attempts to integrate theories and praxis. In reality, information capitalism can be easily understood if one looks at the reality of it outside out the scope of books.
Simply put, by mixing network and capital together, information capitalism as a new form of capitalism is created. This in turn produced new, more significant and efficient forms of exploitation. Seeing such a prospect, capitalists had a renewed sense of enthusiasm and began to frantically chase after information technology. This is the actual reason behind the enthusiasm of information listed companies in their road shows and the record-breaking stock price performances after their listings.
Therefore, what kind of consequences will information capitalism bring to our world?
The answer is simple: exploitation, monopoly and social chaos.
Networked production reinforced the problem of exploitation, which increased productivity and profitability while causing unemployment and wage stagnation, and as a result dragged down consumer demand. A large number of companies have lost the possibility of survival under huge enterprises, which is in itself exploitation. In the past, tech engineers and developers in China were regarded as high-level occupations, now they are calling themselves "coding peasants" or "IT farmers" because of the harsh working conditions they have to endure. The so-called poverty problem of the middle class has become increasingly prominent, causing increasing dissatisfaction and social contradictions. This is particularly prominent in the American society.
Monopoly is another problem and it is actually closely related to exploitation. The frenzied pursuit of profit will inevitably lead to the emergence of monopoly, and the increased levels of capital will enlarge the formation of monopoly. These kinds of problems are particularly serious in China because the Chinese legal system has little understanding on this and therefore it is difficult for anything to be done about it. It is in this situation that companies such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent became monopolies in China. In spite of their market reputation not being exactly stellar, they still possess a large lethal force against other companies. It is safe to say that their policy status and market position are unshakeable.
Ironically, China's policy system highly welcomes and explicitly supports information capitalism. In this respect, unicorn companies are a very obvious example.
A unicorn refers to a technology startup that has been established for less than 10 years and has a valuation of more than US$1 billion but is not listed publicly on the stock market. At the end of 2013, venture capitalist Aileen Lee described used the term to describe this type of companies, and the term has since caught-up in the entrepreneurial world. Companies that can be regarded as unicorns include Uber, Airbnb, Palantir, Snapchat, Dropbox, Pinterest, among others. As for technology companies that have been established for less than 10 years but have a valuation of more than US$ 10 billion, they are referred to as decacorn instead. As of January 2016, there are a total of 229 unicorns in the world, with 33 being in China and 101 in California, together adding up to a total valuation of US$ 1.3 trillion.
In China, the policy system almost completely ignores the principle of information capitalism and the inherent meaning of its exploitation and monopoly. Instead, it has adopted a highly supportive attitude and position on these unicorn enterprises. The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology even officially released the "2017 China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report" and "2017 Zhongguancun Unicorn Enterprise Development Report" in which these enterprises are highly praised. Local governments also take the number of unicorns under their jurisdiction as a form of competition and comparison.
This is a chilling situation. In the future, there will be a single company that controls everything from our life to our thoughts. It can learn everything about us through information, and possibly even drive and influence our voting rights. Amazon's Alexa, for instance, outwardly takes up an appearance as family tool that can play music. Yet, it is precisely through this seemingly unimportant tool that Amazon can access to all of our information all the time. Through this information, Amazon can know all about us, from our living habits to working hours, hobbies to political inclinations. Amazon can then use the information to influence our behavior. Such is the consequence of information capitalism.
Final analysis conclusion:
In the future, one core issue that we cannot avoid is this: when information and capitals are integrated, and when the information society finally arrives, do we really have the ability to resolve exploitation, monopoly and social chaos? If the answer is no, then it will signify the arrival of a major crisis.
