{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":188,"pdf_page":189,"physical_index":189,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"042cac6b5306f2b7a8714c4fa571117985b307269a8bf357fe7e8c2bdd234aa2"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"Dawkins considers his theory, which in some respects takes after Darwin’s, to be the ultimate explanation of life; that is, of both biological and social life, which are really surface phenomena of a deeper, informational code. Most significant for our discussion here, “Dawkins has been extremely effective in probing the boundaries between natural evolution and artificial evolution as created in computers” (Schrage 1995). The very distinction between natural and technological evolution is, according to Dawkins, artificial and redundant. Artificial life researchers, for example, believe that “life is an information process that can be ported from one matrix to another.” Advancements in information technology seem to facilitate such exploration and reaffirm the nature and technology nexus: “The rise of cheap processors and parallel architectures creates the ideal digital ecosystems to spawn software rather than build it. Nature—not rational cognitive planning—becomes the guiding force for the next generation of software solutions” (Schrage 1995).\n\nSince genes cannot sufficiently explain the complexity of human life, Dawkins’s theory introduces another concept, “memes,” which are ideas, or other informational codes, that “are to cultural inheritance what genes are to biological heredity.” Human evolution can be explained as the coevolution of genes and memes. “This idea,” the author suggests, “offers a powerful intellectual framework for a new understanding of life as an information process” (Schrage 1995). In this framework, humans are redefined as mediums of coded information and its communication. The real protagonist of human social history is that which is at the heart of natural history, which in turn is exactly that which is at the heart of the digital revolution: informational code.\n\nThis, we should note, is not simply a matter of metaphors or semantics. Since models and metaphors are really all we have to grasp the world, they very much determine our view of the world, the associations we make, and the impressions that we are left with. The associations of technology with nature, of technological advances with natural history, and of digital media with natural selection reaffirm this technologistic point of view.\n\nT<sub>ECHNOLOGY AS A</sub> N<sub>A</sub>T<sub>URAL</sub> F<sub>ORCE</sub>\n\nLike Dawkins, Kevin Kelly, too, equates network technology with nature and, in fact, converges natural and technological history. In Chapter 3 I dealt extensively with Kelly’s discussion regarding the social forms of the network society. Here I will focus on the technological assumptions on which these social forms are presumed to be predicated. Examples are taken from Kelly’s New Rules for the New Economy (1998). Right at the outset Kelly asserts the centrality of technology in society: “No one,” he says in the opening sentence of the book, “can escape the transforming fire of machines” (Kelly 1998, 1), and he therefore suggests applying a simple rule to understand social and economic reality: “Listen to the technology . . . find out what it is telling you,” he says (8), upholding what Bijker identifies as the “internalist” view on technology (Bijker 1995, 9–10). The socially transformative trajectory of technology, Kelly implies, lies in its internal essence and history.\n\n188\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":187,"next_page":189}