In a famous passage from The Wealth ofNations, Adam Smith, too, grapples with the quantum leap from unreflexive, or dumb micromotives to a rational, beneficent macrobehavior:
Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By referring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. (Smith 1776, 32)
“Spontaneous order” and the “invisible hand” are metaphors for a coordinating mechanism of the activities of individuals who, apart from their own production ability and consumption needs, know very little of the wider economy and who only have the satisfaction of their own interests in mind (Sally 1998, 19). As does the digital discourse, so neoliberalism posits the transformation of dumbness and selfishness into smartness and social benevolence. And both the digital discourse and neoliberal thought are able to conceive of a society, which is nevertheless reducible to its individual units: a network of nodes and a market of individuals.
CHAOS
So far I have compared the digital discourse and neoliberal theory in their respective discussions of networks and markets, especially through the notion of spontaneous order, central to both these worldviews. I have already presented the digital discourse’s discussion of the chaotic nature of network economy, as well as the delimitation of social action mostly to adaptation and flexibility on the part of individuals and laissezfaire policies on the part of society as a whole. The resemblance of this digitalistic representation of the economy to neoliberal theory is again uncanny.
The notion of chaos is also central to neoliberal understanding of markets. Here, again, it is worthwhile noting the transformation from (neoclassical) liberal thought, through neoliberal discourse, and finally to the digital discourse in terms of accounting for the realities of markets. A crucial distinction between Adam Smith’s notion of the invisible hand and Hayek’s notion of spontaneous order is their teleology. For Smith, the invisible hand brings harmony and homeostasis; markets incline toward equilibrium. In contrast, for Hayek, the natural state of the economy is disharmony. The market is not seen as a mechanism designed to attain homeostasis through equilibrium of supply and demand. Instead, the market “is a dynamic process of endogenous change and growth in which means, wants and technology are constantly transformed and in which individual activity is exploratory and experimental. To Hayek, competition is less about equilibrium and more about a ‘discovery procedure,’ an ongoing, open-ended process that coordinates and generates knowledge in a decentralised manner to adapt to uncertainty and environmental flux” (20).
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age