{"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":92,"pdf_page":95,"physical_index":95,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4850b9503bbba0d79698f83e8b21e826aa59d80bd43089237aa21d96b9f9bb18"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"This opposition between the old corporate culture and the new digerati culture is reiterated in the article when the author describes Harris’s current workspace as the opposite of what one might expect a corporation to look like: “an open-plan office that looks like it was furnished by hyperactive children turned loose in a thrift store. Miscellaneous desks and tables are crammed together,” and so forth (Platt 2000). The digerati entrepreneur embodies this tension between, on the one hand, a disorganized, creative, impulsive attitude (“Harris once again became bored with the grind of managing a company . . . [and] surrendered his position as CEO”) and, on the other hand, a business-oriented mindset committed to capitalism after all. This tension is, according to Harris’s assistant, part of who Harris is, an emblem of the new entrepreneurial digerati: “Josh is totally disorganized,” says his assistant, “but he chooses to be disorganized, to free his creative mind. Underneath, there is a solid core ofbusiness sense” (Platt 2000; emphasis mine). Strong personal expression, disorganization, a mischievous attitude, and creativity—all that the old corporate culture asked to check in at the entrance to the office and that were more appropriate to entertain during leisure time—are not just tolerated in the digerati culture but embraced and unleashed as new forces of production.\n\nThe persona of the digerati entrepreneur blurs the distinction between the capitalist and the worker in another way: by mimicking the worker and standing shoulder to shoulder with him. The digerati entrepreneurs no longer see themselves as a representative of the system; quite the contrary, the digerati entrepreneurs grasp themselves as antagonist to the system. They are antistatist, antiestablishment, antibureaucracy, and anticorporation, just as the informational worker is. They are ontologically the little guys, the underdogs, the counterculturists, and the tramps, mobilizing their individual faculties to fight the oppressiveness of the powers that be.\n\nThis duality within the digerati entrepreneurs—capitalists-businessmenbosses, on the one hand, counterculturalists-radicals-hackers, on the other—surfaces in an interview with another digerati entrepreneur— Tom Jennings. His central characteristic is exclaimed in the title of his Wired portrait, “The Anarchist” (Borsook 1996). Jennings is described as having a shrewd business sense, technological savvy and creativity, and radical views about both business and technology. The article portrays the business side and the technology side of the high-tech industry as if they were utterly conflicting and contradictory to each other. In this dichotomous framework—business and capital versus creativity and technology—the digerati are associated with the latter and virtually alienated from the former. Right from the outset, “doing business” in general is portrayed in the article as fundamentally different from “doing digital technology-related business”: “It seems these days,” the author laments, “that to succeed as an anarchist”—Jennings’s central characteristic—“you have to succeed as a businessman.” Jennings explains that in the founding days of the high-tech industry it was not as business-oriented as it is nowadays: “With early microcomputers, it was more exciting—everyone was a weirdo. Then it got boring, all suits. The suits in the Internet business now are taking chances, and even the worst of them have some interest in what’s going on. But in a few years . . . they’ll be terrible” (Borsook 1996). Like Harris, Jennings—notwithstanding his riches, his involvement with business, and his position of power—self-identifies in contrast with all of these, indeed in defiance of them. The author sums up his contrarian demeanor this way: Jennings, he writes, “never relinquished his lifelong irreverence toward TPTB—The Powers That Be. He’s an anarchist, pure and simple—which means he professes to no ideological purity of any kind. He espouses no doctrine . . . about left or right, or about the marketplace” (Borsook 1996).\n\n92\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":91,"next_page":93}