{"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":76,"pdf_page":80,"physical_index":80,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"7908f428d35494e4def36a58119b3e84838c7ed11762b95554b4a63038ed9e06"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"3–34, 157–59). In neoliberal theory the market is seen metaphorically as a machine for the coordination of the interests and actions of free individuals in a rational benevolent fashion. In the digital discourse, and with the introduction of network technology, this machine is no longer merely a metaphor; it is a reality, assumed to reaffirm and fortify the neoliberal claims. Thus, Thomas Friedman—who perhaps more than anyone in the public sphere epitomizes the synergy of network technology and neoliberalism—can write, “The Internet offers the closest thing to a perfectly competitive market in the world today” (Friedman 2000, 81). And Milton Friedman, the most prominent figure in neoliberal thinking in America, recently made similar assertions, noting that “the Internet . . . moves us closer to ‘perfect information’ on markets” (Friedman 2006). By percolating through a technologistic framework, the postulates of neoliberalism are added a gloss of realism by which they are vindicated and affirmed not only intellectually but also technologically.\n\nThat technology seems to vindicate a particular political and economic system is of course not unprecedented. In a work of history, Otto Mayr examines the discourse on the technology of the mechanical clock in seventeenth- through nineteenth-century Europe (Mayr 1986). He shows the role that this technology played as a metaphor in the political discourse of the day. What is most striking about his account is that the clock came to serve as a metaphor for two conflicting political doctrines. In the European continent, the mechanical structure and operation of that technology confirmed in the eyes of contemporaries the neutrality and superiority of an authoritarian conception of order.<sup>7</sup> Political order, like the regularities and order produced by the clock, is superior when it has a maker. In the same vein, that the self-regulating clock was constructed by a maker served as a metaphor for God as the ultimate source of authority.\n\nThe English, on the other hand, vigorously rejected the metaphor of the clock as a validation of authority. In England, where liberalism was experimented with in political life, the clock (and other automata technologies, as these were called) came to play a central role in reaffirming the liberal idea of a spontaneous, self-regulated order. Most notably to our discussion here, Adam Smith and David Hume found in the operation of self-regulated machines the material affirmation for the liberal operation of the market, which they could only have envisioned in the abstract (see Mayr 1986, chap. 10). For both Smith and Hume, it was liberty, rather than authority, that was affirmed by these machines.\n\n76\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":75,"next_page":77}