Computers are things whose immense speed of computation exceeds human capacities. This focus on quantification resonates with the interest of the capitalist class to accumulate ever more capital in ever less time and with the bureaucracy to process lots of data about citizens in order to advance the administered society. Scientists and engineers are fascinated by the idea of playing God, for which the computing is an excellent field of research and development. Capitalist media require constant news and spectacles in order to create attention. Computing promises radical changes, which is why the media are interested in new digital technologies. The thing-character, speed, dualistic logic of computing impresses dominant groups, which results in the diffusion of digital ideology in everyday life in digital capitalism. Representatives of such groups “anticipate miracles” (CEL3, 143) from digital technologies. Lefebvre speaks of “the information ideology” (146–150) as the “myth of freedom realized by information technology” (91). He questions that computing “will generate its effects automatically, since it involves automation” (91). Computer scientists make “optimistic prophecies” (136).
The notion of digital ideology is an update of his notion to 21st-century digital capitalism. Today, such prophecies about computing, the Internet, mobile phones, social media, cloud computing, the Internet of things, industry 4.0, and ever more emergent digital technologies are widespread in daily life. You only need to open a newspaper to find them. I did so on the day when I wrote these lines. One of the first articles I found in the tech section of online news platforms was titled “The World’s First 3D-Printed Neighborhood Is Being Built in Mexico for Families Living on \$3 a Day” (Zdanowicz 2019). The piece was published in CNN Online’s tech section. The author claims that 3D-printing houses is so cheap and fast that the “technology holds promise for affordable housing”. It suggests that housing could be created for the homeless. “The technology is there and the application to building homes for those in need brings a lot of hope for the future”. The article disregards that building homes not just requires materials but also space that is predominantly privately owned and sold as commodity on financialised housing markets. 3D-printing is itself prone to be subsumed under capital. Those who control 3D-printing technologies can also control put price tags on designs and printers. The article presents 3D-printing as technological fix to the social problems of homelessness and housing crises. It disregards these problems’ rootedness in capitalism and class.
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Theorists