Digital ideology conveys the impression that computing with necessity brings about certain changes of society that cannot be undone or stopped. As a consequence, digital ideology with its fetishistic aura of novelty, speed, and pseudo-radicalness distracts attention from class, exploitation, domination, and other social relations. “Information ideology possesses the dubious merit of prophetically heralding the new society: post-industrial, post-capitalist and even post-socialist” (CEL3, 147–148). Lefebvre reminds us that despite its aura of novelty the production of information involves “profits for those who are in charge of production” (144). In 2019, there were six information technology and media companies among the world’s largest 20 transnational corporations<sup>3</sup>: Apple (#6), AT&T (#12), Samsung Electronics (#13), Microsoft (#16), Alphabet/Google (#17), Verizon Communication (#20). The digital world is first and foremost digital capitalism.
Lefebvre argues that information and communication have always been central for the organisation of capitalism and markets. Think, for example, about the communication of prices and available products. He says that “for many centuries, information as such did not appear on the market” and that what is “novel about the contemporary world is that there is a world market in information, which positively ‘drives’ the other markets, through advertising, propaganda, the transmission of positive knowledge, and so on” (CEL3, 145). The importance of informational and digital capitalism, where information and the digital are commodities, is a relatively recent dimension of capitalism.
Lefebvre says there is a split in society between the expelled such as the unemployed and precarious workers and those who are “well-integrated into circuits and networks focused around so-called ‘high-tech production (nuclear energy, computer science, the arm industry, etc.)” (CEL3, 86). In 21st-century digital capitalism, there is on the one hand a split between digital capital and digital labour and on the other hand between a well-positioned digital labour aristocracy and precarious digital workers. Think, for example, on the one side of the software engineer with very high wages working for Google in Silicon Valley and on the other side the call-centre agent or the low-paid hardware assembler working for Foxconn in China. Digital capitalism is a deeply divided class society (see Fuchs 2014). Lefebvre argues that the bourgeoisie has made intellectuals and technicians “partners in its system”, so that “the new middle class and the new bourgeoisie” (CEL3, 120) occupy city life and the working class is displaced.
Chapter Five | Communication in Everyday (Digital) Life
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Everyday Life and Communication in Capitalism
3 Data source: Forbes 2000 List of the World’s Largest Public Companies, year 2019, https://www.forbes.com/ global2000