But top-down management—of the private company or national economy—becomes not only unnecessary but also virtually unfeasible because network markets are also more chaotic. This is the second fundamental transformation entailed by the rise of the network market. Market rationality does not simply increase quantitatively, but rather it changes qualitatively, featuring more flux, unpredictability, acceleration, change, and perpetual instability. This new economic reality requires individual actors, or nodes in the network, to react to the ever-changing market environment with flexibility and adaptability.
The digital discourse on the network market represents a fundamental shift in the political culture of contemporary capitalist societies from social democracy to neoliberalism or from embedded markets to market fundamentalism (Somers and Block 2005). It is against this background that the digital discourse should be understood. It is part of the new spirit of capitalism that sees the contemporary phase of capitalist society as an overcoming of the pitfalls of Fordist society and as the embodiment of the humanist critique of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005)—specifically, regarding the central planning and organization of the economy by society and the state. Marketization and disorganization are seen in the digital discourse as stemming from network technology, as benevolent, and as a transcendence of the shortcomings of the Keynesian welfare state. As this book argues, as it promises the increased rationality of the economic system as a whole and more individual empowerment, the digital discourse also links these benefits to the precariousness and risks associated with the dynamics of a self-regulating market, such as flux and flexibility. It thereby works ideologically by depoliticizing, naturalizing, and neutralizing these social transformations.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age