Introduction

The value selection of information and its threshold-relationship are the basic principles of the origins of life and information. Based on scientific experiments, Manfred Eigen raises selective value as the quantitative evaluation of the evolutionary level of information through unified mathematical expression and verifies that the ultimate foundation of natural evolution is value selection. It reveals the dialectic relationship between creation and stability in the process of system evolution, and shows the possibility and limitation of the evolution of information. These works provide important scientific foundation and inspiring philosophical insights for us to investigate the laws of the generation of living system, and objectively evaluate the potentiality and level of system evolution.

Part I

In order to investigate the origin of biological information and life, and reveal the mechanism of how biological macromolecules emerge from non-living to living, Eigen defines nucleic acid as information and protein as function. He thinks that the basic principle of evolution can be understood as self-organization on the level of molecule and then provides a mechanism of autocatalytic hypercycle. Obviously, in the self-organization processes with teleological feedback, information has intimate relation with function. Information has no significance or value until it is maintained to the moment being read out. Hence, we should go beyond Shannon’s objective information and a priori probability, and deep into subjective aspect of information and its value as well as whole signal system.

“Information originates or gains value by selection.” (Eigen, M., 1971, 469) Eigen argues that “an understanding of the basic principles of evolution as self-organization at the molecular level does not require ‘new physics’, but rather a derivable principle which correlates macroscopic phenomena with elementary dynamical behavior” (ibid, 516) . This principle is the principle of selection.

How to provide a unified mathematical expression? Beginning with the phenomenological rate equations of the generation and transformation of quasi-species (准种，molecular-species), Eigen drives a selection advantage parameter expressed by molecular terms as selective value.

The three parameters occur as a combined term:

W_i = A_iQ_i - D_i                          (1)

Ai: rate parameter, Qi: quality factor, Di: rate parameter of decomposition. (Eigen, M., 1973, 613)

Although what these three parameters express is a property of the carrier of information, the property is intimately relative to the information state of carrier. It is carrier through which Eigen gives information value that makes information get capacity to intrinsically evolve. Through these three new variables which connecting with the concept of information, Eigen expresses the evolutionary level of molecules and provide the criterions for selection. The gain of information depends on the proceeding evaluation of selection which regards to selective value.

Further researches show that the processes of natural evolution always tend to select higher selective value. In other words, selective value always evolves towards the direction on higher level: ∆W > 0. With the evolution of a system, the average productivity of the system E , namely threshold, will be optimized.

Taking selection parameter as the criterion of evaluation and the improvement of selective value as selection advantage, this process can be expressed by the principle of optimization:

W_m1 < W_m2 < ∙∙∙ < W_opt∙       (2)

E → W_max                              (3)

Wm represents a relative maximum among a population of competitors. (Eigen, M., 1971, 517-518)

Therefore, the principle of selection can be expressed as the principle of extremum or the principle of optimization. It shows that selective value should be as high as possible for optimized selection. That is to say, parameters of value, namely generation rate, lifetime and precision, are as large as possible. The optimal E means that ensemble tends to highest selective value as a whole. The evolution of a system is manifested as the act towards highest selective value as a whole.

I think that Eigen’s principle of selection not only breaks through thermodynamics and unifies information theory and evolution theory, but also further develops classical information theory and self-organization theory with which providing a new interpretation of Darwinian evolution theory.

According to the principle of selection, evolution may involve an increase in selective value as well as utilization of larger information content (or utilizing information content cost-optimally . “The use of information associated with a high ‘selective value’, rather than economization with respect to the consumption of free energy, is the decisive factor in evolution.” (Eigen, M., 1971, 517) This breakthrough not only goes beyond the conclusion that “information is negative entropy”, but also beyond past self-organization theories.

According to the theory of dissipative structure, there is only entropy being produced inside of system; system generates order depending on absorbing negative entropy from environment through open. The evolution of such system is passive without intrinsic foundation. Hence, it cannot get rid of the dilemma that the entropy of universe tends to maximum. However, the principle of selection reveals the inner mechanism of the generation of information and evolution. It proves that natural evolution is “once-forever” inevitable if there is value selection though beginning with stochastic event. The general principles of selection and evolution, which is on molecular level, uncover the inner foundation of biological information and the origin of life on the one hand, run through and be intrinsic to all the processes in the whole universe on the other hand.

“Persistent alterations between Yin and Yang are Dao”. The principle of selection and principle of entropy increase are symmetry: their forms are same while directions are opposite. These two principles， just like two forces of Taiji, draw a brand new picture of the world generating without ending. The evolution of things in the universe is a not linear, monotonous development but an everlasting process of birth and death, rise and fall, advance and retreat. Hence, cosmological paradox is solved.

The principle of selection is the most basic principle of evolution theory. It proves that the ultimate basis of natural evolution is value selection. It is the first time that value is introduced into science through selection. This brings important scientific foundation and insights for us to investigate different levels of living system.

Part II

Eigen argues that “evolution represents further optimal program”. Because molecules evolution requires “possibility of correct replication” on the one hand, on the other hand, the mutant in the process of evolution comes from error of replication, “replication error is the main source of new information”. Therefore, “the process of optimization may sometimes involve contradictory requirements” (Eigen, M., 1971, 481)

He obtains an important threshold- relationship for the maximum information content of a quasi-species through combining selection criterion and quality factor:

γ_max = ( ln σ_m ) / ( 1 - q_m)               (4)

In the equation:

• γ_max, maximum character sequence of a message, namely maximum information content of the quasi-species.
• σ_m, threshold, it must be larger than 1 to make.
• q_m, quality factor, namely precision parameter, expresses the probability of a message being replicated，correctly.
• 1-q_m , the average error rate per symbol of the quasi-species. (Eigen, M., 1979, 14)

As showing in the equation, the maximum information content of quasi-species is in direct proportion to threshold σ_m. Larger the threshold is, larger the quantity of information content the system can contain. If the quantity of maximum information content is invariant, error rate is larger with larger threshold. It means that larger inclusion of system will lead to more creativity. The potentiality of the evolution of the new order generated by the system also will be larger. While if threshold is less than 1, the quantity of information content will be negative. It means that the entropy in the system will increase leading to thermal equilibrium (heat death) and decline.

However, at the same time, “the number of molecular symbols of a self-reproducible unit is restricted, the limit being inversely proportional to the average error rate per symbol: 1-q_m .” (Eigen, M., 1979, 15) “There is a threshold-relationship for the rate of mutation, at which evolution is fastest, but which must not be surpassed unless all the information thus far accumulated in the evolutionary process is to be lost.” (Eigen, M., 1979, 8)

“For optimal selection, the required precision of information transfer has to be adjusted to the amount of information to be transferred.” (Eigen, M., 1971, 518) Optimal threshold must correspond to largest selective value. Researches show that self-organization system can modulate its threshold by itself. At the point of catastrophe, threshold always is the largest. Threshold (value) will increase stably as the result of growing. System will select its largest selective value every time the threshold value changes.

I think, Eigen reveals chaos property of evolution information. The error of replication is not external disturbs but the very intrinsic evolution mechanism of the system, namely the inevitable result of self-iteration. Hence, every “dominated copy” always has a “comet tail” of error copy. It is this error which provides selectivity and adaptability the system needs to evolve. It is also the essential feature that distinguishing natural generation from mechanic motion and communication system.

The threshold-relationship deeply uncovers the dialectic relationship between innovation and stability in the process of the evolution of living system, vividly showing its characteristics: it is not new system wiping out and replacing old system but self-renewal and self-transcendent. System optimizes its structure continuing to live and grow through mutation. Therefore, there is no simple replacement between old and new, but complex threshold-relationship between precision and error, conservation and innovation, inheritance and reformation, competence and cooperation, etc. With threshold-relationship equations , we can quantitatively asses the potentiality of the evolution of a system given by replication mechanism. In certain sense, threshold-relationship provides us a scientific method to look for the point at which we can regulate the system properly and find dynamic equilibrium in the selection-evolution process which is full of contradictions. It provides rich insights for us to understand and acquire the evolutionary laws of the wholeness or group of system and brings new light on the methodologies of reformation and innovation.

Acknowledgments

Thanks Liqian Zhou very much for his translation.

References

Eigen, M., (1971). Self-organization of Matter and the Evolution of Biological Macromolecules. Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 58, Nr. 10: 465–523.

Eigen, M., (1973). The Origin of Biological Information. in The Physicists’ Conception of Nature, edited by Mehre, J.. D. Dordrecht-Holland: Reidel Publishing Company.

Eigen, M. & Schuster, P. (1979). The Hypercycle: A principle of natural self-organization, 1979, Springer.

Introduction

In the processes of adaptation, development and evolution, living systems interpret themselves in the environment resulting in changes of both. This leads to the growth of information via rescaling of internal time (heterochrony) followed by spatial reconstructions of morphology (heterotopy). The growth of information is based on perpetual changes in its interpretation in the changing world. Biological evolution involves the anticipatory epigenetic changes in interpretation of the genetic information which cannot be generally forecasted but can provide canalization of structural changes defined by the existing organization leading to predictable patterns of form generation. Social evolution is accompanied by unprecedented growth of the informational field that leads to progressive development of human society.

In modern theoretical biology, the internal measurement concept was suggested as a background for explanation of the phenomenon of life (Matsuno, 1995). The quantum measurement represents the action of a measuring device on the measured system. The quantum measurement is an irreversible phenomenon exhibiting itself as a reduction of the potential field. It has also a relation to the irreversibility of time (Igamberdiev, 1993). The collapse of wave function is not equivalent to time until it does not generate a measurable duration, but when its pattern is repeated consistently, the clock can be set, and the system becomes organized in time. When the measuring device is a part of measured system, the measurement proceeds internally in relation to the whole system and the latter becomes more complex as a result of measurement itself. The aim of this study is to discuss the role of internal measurement in the growth of information in evolving systems. This can refer to biological evolution, social evolution, and as well to the cosmic evolution, which is represented in the phenomenon of expansion of the Universe.

Internal Measurement and the Generation of New Information

The internal measurement leads to an iterative recursive process which appears as the development and evolution of the combined system containing the measuring device and the measured object. The quantum measuring device can be organized in such way that it “encodes” the system in the course of interaction with the measured object, and makes it possible for the measurement to proceed in a regular way. In this case, such system can memorize the evolutionary complication of organization in a digital information-bearing subsystem and evolve further; in other words it contains an internal description memorizing the result of measurement. The logical precondition of the growth of information in this evolving process is the incompleteness of biosystem’s internal description, while the physical precondition is the uncertainty of quantum measurement. The evolutionary increase of complexity becomes possible when genotype appears as a system distinct from phenotype and is embedded into it, which separates energy-degenerate rate-independent genetic symbols from the rate-dependent dynamics of construction that they control (Pattee, 2001). Evolutionary growth of information becomes its own cause, a universal property of our world.

The growth of information accompanies the appearance of measurable time that occurs in the systems performing quantum measurements in a regular way, with low dissipation of energy (Igamberdiev, 1993, 2004). These systems are modelled as hypercycles and can be defined as structures in which the subset of a substrate set of the catalytic system happens to be the matrix for generating and reproducing the set of catalysts itself (Igamberdiev, 1999). This definition keeps the main features of the original notion of hypercycle given by Eigen and Schuster (1979). The hypercyclic system is closed in the way that all of the catalysts needed for an organism to stay alive (representing an efficient causation according to Aristotle and forming organism’s spatiotemporal structure) must be produced by the organism itself, only relying on matter and energy from the outside (Letelier et al., 2011). When hypercycles appear in evolution, time becomes an independent measurable variable due to the internal reproducible changes. Hypercycle organizes irreversibility of quantum measurement into a measurable duration.

Eigen’s hypercycle is a formalized representation of the autopoietic system of Maturana and Varela or Rosen’s (M,R) system (Leteiler et al., 2011). The system becomes an internal autonomous clock that distinguishes the past (memory), the present (life), and the future (anticipation based on the reproducible model), so the modeling, logic and digital information growth become possible within the system (Rosen, 1985). The hypercycle having own embedded description, becomes a structure that realizes computation in accordance with its internal logic defined by the embedded description. The latter has the property of incompleteness which is reflected in the fact that quantum correlations of the states of the system are associated with undecidable logic theories, i.e., they can potentially generate the statements not defined within the system. The undecidability can be interpreted in the sense similar to the Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, meaning that there exist propositions, expressible in the formal logic, which cannot be proven or disproven (Briegel et al., 2009). These propositions become the grounds of expansion of the system and its informational growth.

From the quantum mechanical point of view, the emergence of a new statement results in acquiring a new error-correction meaning to support the internal quantum state (IQS) (Igamberdiev, 2004, 2007). The IQS keeps the system organizationally invariant. It is supported by the set of error-correcting commands that aim to keep IQS free from external demolitions. The error-correction information becomes an important part of the whole informational field. A new statement makes the system more complex (it leads to an increase of its informational content), with its all spatiotemporal organizational invariance be rescaled. In the course of evolution, an available element of a formal system (similarly to a word when used as a metaphor) can acquire another (in addition to already existing) value that contributes to formation of a new level of organization in the system. The logical basis of this action is the incompleteness of the existing formal system that allows assigning arbitrary values to the statements non-provable within that system, while the physical basis is the quantum uncertainty arising in quantum measurement. A new statement can arise from existing elements by acquiring the double function, however, for fixation of this new statement via expansion of existing formal system, some informational redundancy of the system is needed, which can be achieved by multiplication of some of its elements.

Genome is a system which possesses an internal complementarity between the linear texts and their superposition. Relevantly to this, complementarity means that text and hypertext cannot be viewed at the same moment: they should be separated by a time interval. It is an example of uncertainty between the system and its embedding. Overlapping genes, alternatively splicing sequences, RNA and DNA editing, introns, and recombination according to molecular addresses are the features of this hypertext generating a potentially infinite number of language games. Genome as a complete language exists as a complementary set of its alternative combinations resulting in logical paradoxes which determine its temporal dynamics (Isalan, 2009). This superposition is a basis for ontogenesis, adaptation and evolution. Thus, the total “true” genome is a superposition of contradictory arrangements, which generate one single arrangement at a concrete moment of time. The pool of mobile genetic elements expands the combinatorial capacity of the genome by many times. An ambiguity in meaning is analogous to the quantum uncertainty principle in which it is impossible to define strictly the position and impulse of a particle simultaneously, or to fix certain energy in a very short period of time necessary for its registration.

The question of a minimal size of the autocatalytic self-reproducing system and its composition has been discussed in several works (Sharov, 2009; Steel et al., 2013). Self-reproduction itself is a creative process of placing text in text with following self-growing of this joint structure. Any evolutionary change also begins from the placing of “text into text”. This is possible because genome is structurally adapted for realization of such a non-trivial function. Moreover, even a point mutation or deletion may be considered as generative if it is placed in the repeated (e.g., diploid) structure. The doubling is a premise of metasystem transition, which includes duplication of the original system and the establishment of control over multiple copies (Turchin, 1977). The evolutionary significance of gene duplication was considered by Ohno (1970) as a premise of neofunctionalization. The advantage of sexual reproduction is in the casual combinatorial generating of new statements from two separate texts that can acquire meanings, thus it resists evolutionary degradation. It becomes a prerequisite for growing of information and complexity (Igamberdiev, 2014). The combinatorial interaction of heterochronic texts generates a new system in which the internal time is rescaled in a new way that generally cannot be forecasted. The heterochronic duplication (via hybridization of temporally different organisms) generates more possibilities for the metasystem transition. Thus, the incompleteness of embedded set of symbols is the formal cause of evolution. The physical representation of this incompleteness is a quantum uncertainty in the course of measurement (Matsuno, 1992). It spans from the level of elementary particles to biological evolution and to the phenomenon of free will and consciousness.

Growth of Information in the Expanding Universe

The growth of information that we discuss here mainly in relation to biological evolution is relevant also to the physical space-time scales. The self-growing principle of quantum measurement has a property of intrinsic expansion of the informational field. The relationship between observable nature and a hidden “potential” nature is modeled, according to Kineman (2010), as an imaginary space-time domain geometrically represented as radial “Minkowski-space”. Despite of the fact that local space and time are normally represented as real numbers, the general relationship in this geometry is hyperbolic in accordance with the special theory of relativity. When mapped as a radial geometry, the space-time is seen to be intrinsically dynamic (expanding) and self-similar across all scales. The geometry has the properties of early and present acceleration. This representation eliminates the “light cone” and thus all regions in this model are the domains of existence and are observable over time. Nevertheless a domain of general, non-local reality is represented in the imaginary axes that exist simultaneously with measurable, local domains.

The Universe in the concept of Kineman (2010) consists of the units called “holons”, which vaguely correspond to Leibniz’s monads. They possess simultaneous properties of location and non-location, as a point of non-differentiated whole appearing in a subject-object relation. The Everett’s interpretation of quantum mechanics works in these isolated domains but not between the domains, the same idea has been suggested by Matsuno (2012) for the individual biological systems taken as separate domains. The reality of superposition of the wave function is limited by the single monad and does not expand outside it, and in this sense monads do not have windows as originally proposed by Leibniz.

Conclusion

The growth of information is the basic property of evolving systems and it follows from the interaction between non-local and local domains in the course of internal quantum measurements. The internal measurement leads to an iterative recursive process which appears as evolution of the combined system containing the measuring device and the measured object. The system through measurement acquires the property of expansion, which is seen in biological evolution, social development, and at cosmic scales as expansion of the Universe.

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Introduction

The present contribution brings border research into dialogue with critical science and technology studies (STS), and scrutinizes the interrelation between information and communication technologies and processes of bordering. In particular, it addresses the ways through which biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics enlist the human body, networks, and human-machine assemblages in practices of in/exclusion at the contemporary dis-located, and ‘smart’ border. Through a description of the socio-technical apparatuses underlying biometric, algorithmic, and automated border work, the contribution develops the term iBorder, and connects its specific affordances to an emergent late-modern regime of security. In introducing the notion of cultural technique, I argue that contemporary technologically facilitated practices of bordering co-constitute contingent, rather than simply process given, subjectivities and frames for practice.

My talk addresses the role of new technologies of identification, surveillance, and automation in processes of bordering. More precisely, I will develop the term iBorder to conceptually grasp how biometrics, dataveillance, predictive analytics, and robotics impact upon and change contemporary de-territorialised regimes and practices of in/exclusion.

Borders and technologies: Theoretical frames

Current advances in network surveillance, biometric identification, robotics, and algorithmic analytics facilitate processes through which the border disperses and becomes independent of territorial confinement and topographical location. New mobile regimes of in/exclusion target individual bodies wherever they are, while algorithmically determined risks and threats increasingly inform and predispose human decision-making. I suggest here that the protocols, operations, and procedures that underlie the above-mentioned developments form the core of a fundamental cultural technique of bordering that not only processes given, but also actively co-constitutes contingent, identities and patterns of life.

Presently, borders have lost much of an earlier dependence on territoriality and physical impenetrability (Parker and Vaughan-Williams, 2009; Perkins and Rumford, 2013). Contemporary technologies afford new dynamics of transnationalization, privatization, and digitization (Bauman et.al., page 126) that rearticulate borders and blur distinctions between state and business, private and public, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. As Côté-Boucher, Infantino and Salter (2014) express it, “while modern borders have been taken to express the power of the nation-state […], state power is nowadays exercised by delegating practices of state sovereignty to local, transnational and private actors outside the state apparatus and away from traditional state actors” (page 196).

Recently, the role of technology in processes of dis-locating and dispersing borders has attracted increasing attention. Vukov and Sheller (2013, page 225), for instance, note a transformation of borders toward “sophisticated, flexible, and mobile devices of tracking, filtration, and exclusion”. According to the authors, “new technologies of bio-informatic border security and remote surveillance” (page 226) lead to a paradigm shift that demands “sustained attention to the technocultural and communicative infrastructure of these bordering devices and technologies” (page 227). As such, a vernacularisation of border studies as the one called for by Perkins and Rumford (2013) has to include a non-human dimension that critically addresses recent technological changes and their potential impacts. The term iBorder enables such a widened perspective in that it affords a systematic description of the changing technological environments within which emergent regimes of late-modern bordering operate. The concept opens for attention to non-human, machinic forms of agency and facilitates a critical investigation of their roles in contemporary cultural techniques of sorting, profiling, categorizing, predicting, and filtering.

Main findings

In the following, I will specify the technologies behind the apparatus of iBorder along three different axis – biometrics, dataveillance, and robotics. Through a description of key technical advances and their specific affordances, two tendencies in the contemporary cultural technique of bordering will emerge: One consists of new technologies and operations that allow for an improved identification of specific individual subjects, while the other is based on the mining and subsequent analysis of data sets at population level with the aim of predicting and if necessary pre-empting abstracted patterns of life. Both tendencies are facilitated by the socio-technological apparatus of iBorder and constitute core elements of bordering as a cultural technique.

The “hip, tricky little ‘i’” (Andrejevic, 2007, page 4) in iBorder points to a series of technologically afforded tendencies in contemporary bordering that interconnect subjects, operations, and machines in complex co-constitutive assemblages. Firstly, iBorder informationalizes the body and enables its virtual emergence as “data-doubles” (Muller 2008, page 128; Lyon 2014) in inter-operable databases. Secondly, iBorder individualizes the border. It attaches itself to mobile bodies by means of increasingly transparent technical interfaces and biological and behavioural markers. The body thus becomes “the carrier of the border” (Amoore, 2006, page 348) that moves along wherever subjects may go. Thirdly, iBorder implicates subjects in the bordering process in new ways. New technologies of ubiquitous surveillance and dataveillance in a “digital enclosure” (Andrejevic, 2007, page 2) record, and subsequently exploit, day-to-day practices to establish implicit norms against which potential deviations can be measured. Fourthly, iBorder is interactive in that its constitutive technologies afford constant feedback loops that afford ever more sophisticated forms of “hypercoordination and microcoordination” (Thrift 2004, page 185). Fifthly, iBorder infringes upon personal rights and constitutively undermines the private sphere of citizens, and lastly, iBorder is intimidating in that its techniques and applications are justified with reference to allegedly pervasive threats and dangers creating the discursive basis for a “neurotic citizenship” (Ajana, 2013, page 143). As a consequence of these tendencies, borders as bounded topographical locations or zones recede and re-emerge as iBorder – an ephemeral, technologically afforded aura that attaches itself to the subject and that transforms Agamben’s (1998) overflowing spaces of the exception into a pervasive relational “banopticon” in the sense of Bigo (2007).

iBorder refers to a socio-technological apparatus that employs techniques of biometric and algorithmic bordering to validate, establish, and indeed produce, identities and patterns of life. The deployed practices enlist individual subjects as both target and source in bordering processes that disperse locally as well as across transnational space. In these processes, individuals become objects of governance to be analysed and assessed, but also serve as implicit contributors to the databases enabling algorithm-driven mappings of patterns of behaviour and association.

From ontologies to ontic operations: Practices of iBordering

So far, I have conceptualized the socio-technical apparatus of iBorder to highlight the technological infrastructure implying a potential for pervasive transnational surveillance and control. However, as Walters (2011) aptly points out, researchers should avoid apocalyptic stances that take the pretensions of a global security apparatus composed of clandestinely operating state actors and private companies with vested economic interests at face value. Rather, Walters (2011) suggests, critical research should focus on “the fissure and limits” of socio-technical systems of control and show that these systems “are often not as purposeful and coherent as they might sometimes appear” (page 55).

Arguing in a similar direction, Bigo (2007, 2014) alerts to the fact that contemporary border research exhibits a “lack of attention to the dispositions of the agents and the contexts” of bordering processes (Bigo, 2014, page 211), and therefore often remains oblivious of the “microphysics” of power and of the capacities “of the weak […] to subvert the illusory dream of total control” (Bigo 2007, page 12). As Raley (2013) points out, all “constellations of control are imbricated with constellations of expressive resistance” (page 131).

As a an alternative methodological template, Walters (2011) proposes to direct empirical attention to what he terms “technological work” (page 58) – the mundane day-to-day activities and performances that “go into making technology function” (page 59) or that might compromise their outcomes (page 54). As such, articulating a similar criticism as Perkins and Rumford (2013) in their appeal for a vernacularisation of border research, also Walters (2011) asserts the significance of everyday practices for processes of bordering, but extends the scope into a highly technologized area of surveillance, management, and control.

Conclusion

The concept of iBorder developed in this contribution highlights the socio-technical apparatus that affords the co-constitutive cultural technique of bordering in emergent control societies. Juridical and disciplinary aspects produce obedient and docile individuals through such mechanisms as biometric identification, ‘trusted’ traveller programmes, ubiquitous (self) surveillance, as well as the constant threat of decelerating searches, detention, and ultimately death. On the other hand, a technologically facilitated biopolitical component draws upon algorithm-based predictive analytics and robotics to regulate flows of categories by identifying implied norms against which suspicious deviations can be measured, thus not only predicting and potentially preventing the occurrence of threatening patterns and compensating for their effects, but also framing and predisposing the very performances through which such patterns are brought forth and made relevant in the first place.

Similar to the corals, pens, and fences becoming productive of species of domesticated animals referred to by Winthrop-Young (2013), I argue that contemporary technologies of identification, tracking, mapping, and mining that constitute the cultural technique of ibordering entail a biometric and algorithmic identity production that actively shapes the contingent bodies, subjectivities, data-doubles, and patterns of life it purports to merely identify and process.

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Introduction

In this study, unproductive consequences of neoliberal policies of information society will be explored by focusing on Turkey. These policies were concluded with failures and played an important role in losing Turkey’s potential in ICTs, though they were aiming for the foundation of a prosperous society in which wealth creation by means of information processing with ICTs is essential.

In this respect, the latest information society policy paper of Turkey, entitled as 2015-2018 Information Society Strategy and Action Plan, will be analyzed critically. The document is important from several perspectives. Firstly, it displays both a maturity and obsolescence in Turkish policy circles regarding to information society. Secondly, it offers a clear vision of the failures of neoliberal policies. Thirdly, it alleges a ‘success’ in developing e-government in Turkey that must be elaborated cautiously. Fourthly, it shows a break in Turkish stance given that a stress on local production capacity is gradually taking the upper hand over the free-market oriented neoliberal policies.

Theoretical connections between capitalism and information society will not be investigated because there is abundance of works in the literature. For further studies it is necessary to explore them but this study has a limited scope. To repeat them would narrow the space for the study that aims to present the consequences of information society policies in Turkey. Lastly, ‘dependency’, for some people, may seem to be a relic of the 20^th century academia but it is still the best concept available to define an enduring injustice.

Contradiction of positions

Over the years, there have been two positions in Turkey. The one that is related with neoliberalism has become hegemonic and the other that is emphasizing local production has become marginalized. It must be stressed that Turkey, in the 1990s, was the regional leader in founding information society due to its production and exportation capacity of digital telecommunication equipments [5].

The first policy paper related to Turkish information society was published by the World Bank in 1993. It was suggesting nothing concrete for the protection of local technology, instead underscoring privatization, deregulation and the ‘advantages’ of importation [14]. Against neoliberalism, Turkish experts, under the auspices of TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey), published two different policy papers in 1999 and 2004 [12-11]. However, their call for local technology went unanswered given that the official strategy paper accepted by the government in 2006 was prepared by a foreign firm and mentioned just some vague words on local production [3].

The latest document was prepared by Turkish officials in the Ministry of Development with the contribution of the related institutions, though they also bought the services of a foreign firm in the early preparation stages [8]. It is a comprehensive document with its insight on the consequences of previous policies. Accordingly, in spite of partial improvements, Turkey has failed to accomplish almost all its goals for information society but exceptionally has had a ‘success’ in e-government [7].

The document can also be considered as an indication of the vanishing importance of information society for Turkish policy makers. The strategy document for the period between 2010 and 2014 has never been published and there is any public explication for that. Furthermore, the document for the period between 2014 and 2018 was made public in May 2014 as a draft copy but the final copy was approved with an important delay and came into force only after March 2015 [15].

Failures of neoliberal policies

While underscoring eight axes in order to establish information society, the latest document elaborates Turkey’s progress and problems for each. These problems are essential and can be summarized as below;

• Information Technologies Sector: i) Small market with insufficient spending; ii) Concentration on imported hardware; iii) Local production limited with assembling capacity; iv) Low market share of software and IT services; v) Insufficient added-value and employment.
• Broadband Infrastructure and Sector Competition: i) Fixed broadband access concentrated on DSL due to low share of fiber and cable; ii) Lack of competition in DSL and cable access; iii) Rapidly increasing (but very small) share of fiber due to competition; iv) Domination of mobile technologies in broadband access; v) Expensive cost of access due to high taxation and lack of competition in fixed broadband; vi) Geographical differences in the quality of access.
• Qualified Human Resources and Employment: i) Steady share of ICTs employment; ii) Quality gap between labor offer and demand.
• Penetration of ICTs into the Society: i) Low diffusion and usage of ICTs; ii) Insufficient Turkish digital content; iii) Expensive prices of access and devices due to taxation; iv) Low ICTs awareness and skills among the people; v) Digital gap in terms of gender, age, handicap, income, education and residence.
• Information Security and User Confidence: i) Incomplete legal regulations; ii) Increasing cyber crime; iii) Lack of coordination.
• ICTs Supported Innovative Solutions: ii) Lack of guidance and standards for smart city applications; ii) Limited practice of smart city and smart building applications; iii) Low diffusion and regulation problems of telemedicine; iv) Limited big data applications.
• Internet Entrepreneurship and e-Commerce: i) Insufficient demand for the Internet and e-commerce; ii) Insufficient start-up capital; iii) Difficulties of getting state support; iv) Lack of orientation and education; v) Obstacles in founding and closing company; v) Security and privacy concerns.
• User Centered and Effective Public Services: i) Insufficient integration and cooperation of institutions; ii) Problems of service quality and participation; iii) Poor working conditions of ICTs experts; iv) Problems for sharing public data for the creation of added-value.

Alternatively the document strongly indicates, as a success, the increase in public ICTs investments, raising number of online public services and users, together with high percentage of user satisfaction.

A comparison with the strategy document of 2006, entitled as Information Society Strategy (2006-2010), can be enlightening because it can be considered as the culmination of neoliberal policies. The document prioritizes seven areas, namely; i) Social transformation (through effective usage of ICTs by citizens); ii) ICTs adoption by business (especially SMEs); iii) Citizen-focused service transformation (through effective online public services); iv) Modernization in public administration (through effective e-government); v) A globally competitive IT sector; vi) Competitive, widespread and affordable telecommunications infrastructure and services; vii) Improvement of R&D and innovation.

Accordingly, the document of 2006 envisages an information society based on widespread diffusion and usage of ICTs by individuals and companies, creating economic and social benefits. This becomes possible by low access prices of the competitive market and the increasing awareness and education of the people. In this sense, online public services and e-government applications are considered as an effective way of mobilizing people and companies to start using ICTs. Simultaneously, as an end result, it is expected that a competitive IT industry would flourish and start exporting. Increasing the level of added-value by improving R&D is another expectation.

The document of 2006 was harshly criticized by Turkish experts for its superficiality and for its price tag of 1.2 million dollars [6-9-10]. The latest document also shows that Turkey has lost the last decade. It is not possible to claim a robust information technologies and services market. Despite all efforts, competition is not working. High taxation and prices cause people’s abstinence for information technologies and services. Due to failure of education strategies, Turkish people are still unaware and deprived of necessary skills. There is also a digital divide in the country.

E-government ‘success’

In the absence of local industry, it is reasonable to claim that whole e-government, created by paying billions of dollars, is built on imported hardware. This is important in a country in which trade deficit is a major threat. Moreover, the motivation for these investments was to ignite information society in which private sector is the primary actor. However, there is not a sign of a vivid information sector and Turkish information society, so far, is almost entirely composed of government initiatives. This is an embarrassment for a market oriented strategy. In these circumstances, it is not nonsense to argue that information society has become a reason of inflating public sector in an unproductive way by draining public money to make international companies richer without having proper results.

Besides, information society has been generally associated with a democratic society in which citizens would be able to participate directly to political processes [13]. Conversely, in Turkey, it is reduced to online public services, discarding all its potential in terms of emancipation. The stress on smart city applications in the latest document is another reflection of this. Additionally, it is also argued that neoliberal policies of information society are designed by dominant powers in order to maintain their hegemony [1-2]. From this perspective, it can be argued that these policies have had a success by making Turkey a loyal customer of international companies.

Increasing importance of local production

In the latest document, Turkish policy makers underscore multiple times their commitment for local production and exportation. They accentuate e-commerce and software production, together with Turkey’s potential in digital games. However, the core of the strategy is FATİH project. With the project, 10.6 millions tablet computers will be distributed to students and teachers, to be renewed every four years. All schools will have access to the Internet and all classrooms will be equipped with smart boards. The project also involves the production of e-content and an update of curriculum with ICTs.

This creates an enormous market and it is stated that local production will be privileged. The document emphasizes the benefits of focusing on the production smart devices such as tablets and smart phones due to promising future of these equipments and stiff competition in other sectors. This is supported with an interest on the development of 4G and 5G mobile devices. Besides, the exportation of digital education content is also considered as an important source of income. The project answers other concerns as well. Millions of households will have their first ICTs device with the distributions of tablet computers, eliminating the price problem. Necessary IT skills will be learned by students.

With a comprehensive project such as FATİH, the latest document offers a more concrete strategy than the others. But precious time has been wasted. It is still questionable that this latest strategy will be a success.

Conclusion

It is evident that policy papers do not reflect social reality. But they are still important source of information for social scientists. They display the thinking of policy makers. Given that this group of people have access to power, it is not easy to ignore their mind and policy papers. Even if there is a gap between social reality and policy papers, these papers has the potential to influence social reality. The results obtained from the brief analysis of the latest strategy document of Turkey must be considered within this framework.

Information technologies and services are important source of growth and employment. In the last decade, a couple of countries in Asia and Eastern Europe obtained significant development in this domain. Turkey did not make much progress, according to the latest document. After the failures of neoliberal policies, highlighting only diffusion, the document shows us the new approach of Turkish policy makers with a relatively stronger stress on local production and exportation. In contrast to previous documents, FATİH project offers real opportunities behind wishful thinking. But as an example of the gap between social reality and policy papers, local company that signed for the production of 700 thousands tablet computers announced 100% Turkish design of their products, causing questions about the production [4].

References

1. Başaran, F. Enformasyon Toplumu Politikaları ve Gelişmekte Olan Ülkeler. İletişim Araştırmaları, 2004, 2(2), 7-31.
2. Comor, E.A. The Re-tooling of American Hegemony: U.S. Foreign Communication Policy From Free Flow to Free Trade. In Media in Global Context: A Reader, 1st ed.; Sreberny-Mohammadi, A., Winseck, D., McKenna, J., Boyd-Barret, O., Eds.; Arnold: London, UK, 1997; pp. 194-206.
3. Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı. Bilgi Toplumu Stratejisi (2006-2010), Ankara, Turkey, 2006; pp. 20, 37-39
4. FATİH Projesi tablet ihalesini Telpa kazandı!, http://www.teknolojigundem.com/haber/fatih-projesi-tablet-ihalesini-telpa-kazandi/666087 (accessed on 14.05.2015).
5. Geray, H. İletişim ve Teknoloji: Uluslararası Birikim Düzeninde Yeni Medya Politikaları, 1st ed.; Ütopya: Ankara, Turkey, 2002; pp. 142.
6. Geray, H.; Başaran-Özdemir, F. Reproducing Dependency: How Hegemonic Discourses Shape ICT Policies in the Periphery. In Handbook of Research on Information Communication Technology Policy: Trends, Issues and Advancements, 1st ed.; Adomi, E.E., Eds.; Information Science Reference: Hershey & New York, USA, 2011: Volume 2, pp.599-615.
7. Kalkınma Bakanlığı. 2015-2018 Bilgi Toplumu Stratejisi ve Eylem Planı, Ankara, Turkey, 2014; pp. 39-61, 62-66.
8. Kalkınma Bakanlığı. (Personal correspondence).
9. Salman, B. Bilgi ve İletişim Teknolojilerini Kullanan mı Üreten mi Olacağız?, http://www.emo.org.tr/ekler/3c788c57e423fa9_ek.pdf?dergi=429 (accessed on 14.01.2015).
10. Taşdemir. B. Bilgi Toplumu Söylemi: ‘Türkiye 2006-2010 Bilgi Toplumu Stratejisi’ Metninin Eleştirel Değerlendirilmesi. In Karaelmas 2009: Medya ve Kültür, 1st ed.; Türkoğlu, N., Toprak-Alayoğlu, S., Eds.; Urban: İstanbul, Turkey, 2009; pp. 299-316.
11. Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknik Araştırma Kurumu. Ulusal Bilim ve Teknoloji Politikaları, 2003-2023 Strateji Belgesi, Ankara, Turkey, 2004.
12. Ulaştırma Bakanlığı. Türkiye Ulusal Enformasyon Altyapısı Anaplanı, Sonuç Raporu, Ankara, Turkey, 1999.
13. Van Dijk, J., The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media, 2nd ed.; Sage: London, UK, 2006; pp. 103-108.
14. World Bank. Turkey: Informatics and Economic Modernization, Washington, USA, 1993; pp. 23, 199-205.
15. 2015-2018 Bilgi Toplumu Stratejisi ve Eylem Planı Yayımlandı, http://www.bilgitoplumu.gov.tr/2015/2015-2018-bilgi-toplumu-stratejisi-ve-eylem-plani-yayimlandi-2/ (accessed on 14.05.2015).

Introduction

This study proposes to analyze the phenomenon known as "Binge-watching" or “Binge-viewing”, widely commented on in the press today[i]. This is the widespread habit of watching, without interruptions, numerous chapters or even entire seasons of television series through internet streaming. The theoretical background for this analysis is the relationship between the historical sense of the word experience and the practice of narrative, understood in the broader sense. This is based on Walter Benjamin's proposal to associate the notion of experience with that of narrative discourse, both focused on a radically historical sense. The displacements and historical revaluations of the three “communication forms” (“Formen der Mitteilung”[ii]), the oral narrative, the written novel and journalistic information, supply the conductive thread for Benjamin to weave a theory of different experience values. The retraction of the art of exchanging experiences in the capitalist and urban world, given concomitantly with the flourishing of the novel, in the 18th and 19th centuries, weakened the sense of experience privileged by Benjamin, centered on the concepts of transmission and collective and diachronic enrichment of stories. Life as an experience (“Erfahrung”) is the transformation of the time lived as a whole, rich in meaning capable of being transmitted. Experience narrativization is the consequence and consummation of search for meaning for the time lived, through the organization of pure succession as a whole with a beginning, middle and end, in which the sequence of events suggests itself as a discursive intelligibility to be interpreted and appropriated by the listener, reader or spectator.

The experience value is diminished when what is at stake in a story is no more the condensation of experiential knowledge. In the case of the novel reading, at least to Benjamin, the experiential value is deprecated in favor of the solitary dive into the fictional character world of the psychologically shaped realistic novel. This value is even more parlous when the reader is shaped by journalistic information logic, anchored in a momentary reference to the most current and familiar as possible. Experience in the strong sense (Erfahrung), is, in the modern world, transmuted in “Erlebnis”, a set of radically individual loosely connected memories and sensations.

This historic panel, painted by Benjamin in the 1930s, faced with current conditions, provides a basis for thinking about today’s experience value. Is the Erlebnis concept valid to depict today’s state of things? Isn’t its molding after the 19th century bourgeois subject reader in need of review, using the same method employed by Benjamin? According to the indications inferred by Benjamin’s theoretical practice, in the essay “The storyteller”, as in other important 1930’s writings, such as "The work of art at the time of its technical reproducibility" and "On some themes in Baudelaire", his method consisted in seeking, in artistic forms preferred during an epoch, strong evidence about the current state of experience. This elective affinity of an epoch with certain art forms is what Benjamin called "social meaning" (“gesellshaftliche Bedeutung”) of an art. There is an intense adjustment between the epoch and the works of art when the receiver not only enjoys the products, but also feels himself able to criticize them, as was, according to the author, the case of the cinema to the 1930s public. It is believed that various contemporary narrative forms, such as "media novels", "fan fictions", and the once little valued TV series episodes, which have recently achieved high prestige, can be listed as forms elected by our time. Taking this later form and its reception as an object of analysis, what can we then understand about the current state of experience?

Methods

The method used is that inferred in the essay "The Storyteller", as well as "On some themes in Baudelaire" and "The work of art at the age of mechanical reproduction", to consider the artistic forms endowed with "social meaning" by an epoch, in relation to the experience concept and its transformations. The TV series, consumed in today’s internet digital environment, in whole season packets and assisted in long sessions lasting sometimes whole weekends, is a phenomenon called "binge-watching" or "binge-viewing" by the press. Can this provide a valid work of art case with social signification? If so, what does it show regarding the experientiality in the contemporary world? Paul Ricoeur’s theories are also used, in regard to the relationship between the narrative forms and the constitution of a "narrative identity"[iii]. These identities, always in the making and in no way endorsing the notion of a Cartesian substantial subject, may belong to a person, a group or a community. This notion of narrative identity can be put into a dialogue with the concept of experience in Benjamin, and added to the question regarding the supposed narrative identity mode in the case of "binge-watching".

Results and Discussion

The phenomenon analysis of television series reception in the digital environment, must take into account that this media is not simply a neutral vehicle, the bearer of a narrative material, but as a transforming element of this art form. The TV series and its reception is transformed by new media, and gains new social meaning. Contrary to the logic of attention fragmentation, which is dominant in the internet digital environment, the consumption of a chain of episodes, characterized as "compulsive" by the press, leads to a fictional submersion. Does this permit the supposition that the experience concept, in its link with narrative forms, in this case, is somehow renewed? The example of prolonged and personalized watching, partially stigmatized by the press as an addiction and compulsion ("Binge"), may additionally indicate a kind of experience nostalgia? The narrative structure, in general, is based on the concept of order and closing, producing interconnection between the events. Would this kind interconnection between the events be enhanced by the longer watching, compared to former reception through the TV channels, which had wide intervals between the episodes? Can the new attention type generated by the continual linking of episodes and the strong whole memory, along with the intensive knowledge process of the characters, their intentions and their dilemmas, represent an unexpected narrative discourse revaluation in an online environment whose dominant forces are frankly contrary to any process involving continuous use and exclusive attention?

Conclusions

Although the compulsive episode consumption leads to a thread that promotes the partial rehabilitation of an intensive use of narrative space, atypical within our epoch scenario in which dispersion and distraction encouragement is unequivocal, it is nonetheless, simply consumption. The phenomenon stigmatization by the press demonstrates only that even this consumption form is less dispersive than the main online trending behavior. The phenomenon is indeed a little auspicious, because it indicates at least a tenuous ongoing need for narratives with a logic that is proper for this type of discourse, so strange to the fragmentary nature of this digital media. But the serie’s weak structure toward achieving an end, an almost a never-ending production of new seasons, guided only by popularity ratings, provide little or no support to narrative identity formation, contributing to leaving free space for subject formatting through consumption habits and its stereotypes.

References and Notes

Benjamin, Walter. “Der Erzähler. Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows”. Gesammelte Schriften. Bd. II-2. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996.

_____________. “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit”. Gesammelte Schriften. Bd. I-2. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996.

_____________. “Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire”. Gesammelte Schriften. Bd. I-2. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the plot. Design and intention in narrative. Cambridge: Havard University Press, sd.

Kermode, Frank. The sense of na ending. Studies in the theory of fiction. Oxford: University Press, 2000.

Ricoeur, Paul. Temps et Rècit III. Le temps raconté. Paris: Ed. Du Seuil, 1985.

[i] See, among many others, John Jurgensen’s article at Wall Street Journal: “Binge Viewing: TV's Lost Weekends”. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303740704577521300806686174

[ii] Benjamin, Walter. “Der Erzähler. Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows”. GS II-2, p. 443.

[iii] Ricoeur, Paul. Temps et Rècit III. Le temps raconté. Paris: Ed. Du Seuil, 1985.

Introduction

When it comes to your deepest, darkest nature, there’s a whole lot of accusing going on. The fight or flight folks tell you that your biology comes complete with an overwhelming instinct for survival. Rational-choice-obsessed specialists like economists and evolutionary psychologists claim that you are not only preprogrammed for survival at all costs, but that you are wired to maximize your personal gains. And evolutionary biologists like William Hamilton, Richard Dawkins and Robert Trivers assert that you are biologically programmed to maximize the spread of your selfish genes.  

These claims about your most intimate nature are concealed in the very foundations of many of the social and evolutionary sciences, from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to political science, sociology, philosophy, and economics. They are buried deep below the surface in the form of assumptions—often hidden assumptions. But these assumptions about your innermost self are only half-right. More important, they are half-wrong. And the half that’s wrong throws evolutionary and social sciences way off base. Which may explain why one of the most lauded and mathematically savvy economists of his day, Irving Fisher, told the New York Times in mid-October, 1929, that stocks were about to go “a good deal higher within a few months.” Then on October 29^th came Black Tuesday and the great crash of 1929.

Like the economy, your biology often refuses to follow the paths that scientific assumptions about survival and selfishness would predict. Yes, some of your internal mechanisms do work to stack up your survival advantages. And to maximize your sexual prizes.  But you are also plagued with internal mechanisms that do the very opposite, biological mechanisms that hobble you: depression, anxiety, brain freeze, and even impulses toward suicide. What’s more, on occasion you are willing to sacrifice your life for something higher than yourself. Ten million followed that inner call in the First World War.

Your self-destruct mechanisms—human self-destruct mechanisms--are not unique. They’ve been integral to the 3.85-billion-year history of life. They are similar to apoptotic mechanisms, the “programmed cell death” mechanisms, that individual cells in a bacterial society or in your body use to commit suicide.

Why do self-destruct mechanisms of this sort exist? Because the believers in the survival instinct, the rational choice model, and the selfish gene miss something. Something big. Your biology is not wired strictly for personal gain. It is wired to make you a component in something far greater than yourself. It is wired to make you a module in a collective learning machine, a complex adaptive system, a parallel-processing search engine, a group IQ, a social intelligence. You are wired to be a neuron in a social brain.

A neuron in a brain that, like you, collaborates to make something bigger than itself: a global brain.

Methods

This talk is based on the research for my first two books, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21^st Century. That research drew heavily on work in evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, animal behavior, experimental psychology, neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, anthropology, and history. It involved the use of over 4,000 reference sources.

Results and Discussion

The common wisdom—and the accepted view in evolutionary biology—is that we humans and our animal cousins are built with a survival instinct. An instinct that watches out for our personal survival, and for personal survival ahead of everything else.

Yet when we encounter a saber tooth tiger on a pathway, we have three modes of response: not just Walter Bradford Cannon’s fight or flight, but fight, flight, or freeze. And freeze can be suicide. That’s not the only suicidal mechanism locked into our biology. When you’re about to take that all-important math test and you’ve studied for weeks, then finally open the test booklet, your mind locks up. It refuses to remember a thing. That anxiety blackout is not a product of a patriarchal civilization, industrialism, or capitalism. It is a product of your biology.

When you are fired or your wife tells you she is leaving you, your survival instinct should put your mind into overdrive. It should give you the juice to hunt with energy and creativity for your next step. But high-power cognitive processing is not what your biology serves up. Instead, it bogs you in depression, a state in which it’s hard to think of even tying your shoes.

How do mental paralysis and depression up your odds of survival? They don’t.

So what gives? How could natural selection possibly favor such obvious self-destruct mechanisms? The answer is in the algorithms that power collective intelligences, mass learning machines like neural nets and the immune system. Rules that turn down the flow of resources and influence to the nodes that fail to cope with the problems of the moment and turn up the resource-flow and the influence of the nodes that have a handle on things.

Conclusions

We need a radical overhaul of the assumptions underlying many of our sciences and many of our pop-cultural beliefs. Yes, we need to recognize our survival instincts and our selfish biological built-ins. But we also need to see our role in something higher than ourselves—complex adaptive systems, neural-net-like collective learning machines. If we do, many of the “irrational” mysteries that make the predictions of so many social scientists wrong may suddenly appear to be rational after all.

References and Notes

1. Bloom, H. The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History; Atlantic Monthly Press: New York, USA, 1995.
2. Bloom, H. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century; John Wiley & Sons: New York, USA, 2000.
3. Bredesen, D. Neural Apoptosis. Annals of Neurology 1995, Vol 38, 839–851.
4. Cannon, W.B. Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement; D. Appleton: New York, USA, 1915; pp. 202, 275-277.
5. Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene; Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 1976.
6. Durkheim, E.; Suicide: A Study In Sociology; translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson. The Free Press: New York, USA, 1951 (originally published 1897).
7. Haanen, C., Vermes, I. Apoptosis: programmed cell death in fetal development. European Journal of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology 1996, Volume 64, Issue 1, 129–133.
8. Harlow, H.F.; Suomi, S.J. "Production and Alleviation of Depressive Behaviors in Monkeys." In Psychopathology: Experimental Models; Maser, J.D.; Seligman, M. Eds.; W.H. Freeman and Company: San Francisco, USA, 1977; pp. 167-170.
9. Holland, J.H. Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity; New York, USA: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
10. Hopfield, J.J. "Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 1982, Vol. 79, Number 8, 2554-8.
11. Kirschner, M.; Gerhart, J. Evolvability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 1998, vol. 95 no. 15, 8420–8427.
12. McClelland, J.L., Rumelhart, D.E. and the PDP Research Group; Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Volume 2: Psychological and Biological Models; A Bradford Book, The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1986.
13. Miller, W.R.; Rosellini, R.A.; Seligman, M. "Learned Helplessness and Depression." In Psychopathology: Experimental Models, Maser, J.D., Seligman, M., Eds.; W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, USA, 1977; pp. 104-130.
14. Nasar, S. Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius; Simon & Schuster: New York, USA, 2011; pp. 312-313.
15. Kevin A. Roth, K.A, D'Sa, C. Apoptosis and brain development, Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 2001. Volume 7, Issue 4, 261–266.
16. Tomei, D., Cope, F.O., editors, Apoptosis: the molecular basis of cell death. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press: Plainview, NY, USA, 1991.
17. Wilson, E.O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1975.
18. Wilson, E.O. The Social Conquest of Earth, W.W. Norton: New York, USA, 2012.
19. Wilson, D.S. Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others (Foundational Questions in Science). Yale University Press: New Haven, Connecticut, USA; 2015.

Introduction

The proposed article and presentation develops arguments for revising our understanding of the “relations of production” as well as the “means of production”. Emanating from works and the critique of a market- and systems-capitalism [Gibson-Graham, 1996], the article provides an understanding of media as an originary means of production to augment the concept of digital labour. This will allow for consideration of ‘new’ modes of production and value creation as well as new forms of value.

Starting with a short historical reconstruction of the conceptualization of media as a means of production [Williams 1983/1958] we will illustrate the transformation from a push¬ to a pull media economy [Lull 2007; Winter 2012]. Highlighting two aspects of this process, we will show how and why the music economy has changed due to its experiencing the pressures of digitalization and convergence earlier than other economies [Wikström 2009; Handke 2010]. Here, through practices like commenting, sharing, producing, conveying, co-creating et cetera, basically everybody has access (though not ownership!) to means that allow for various forms of participation in value creation. Since not only traditional public and commercial actors have access to digital media as a means of digital production, the relations, conditions and possibilities within media culture and economy change.

This concept has recently been criticised for not recognizing the exploitative relationship between capitalist media companies and their users that engage in [mostly unpaid] forms of digital labour [Fuchs & Sevignani, 2013]. This, so the story goes, has been made possible by the commodification of a “semiotic universe” [Goldman 1994: 186; cit. after Büsher & Igoe 2013: 3] or in more Marxian terms: A new form of General Intellect that is constituted by prosumers within digitally networked media [Marx 1983/1858: 302, cf. Arvidsson 2006: 32f]. Here, the use-values that are prosumed are the source of value and profits that a media company capitalizes on. As a result these prosumtive processes are correctly being seen as another attempt of ‘capitalism’ to capitalize on formerly ‘authentic’ forms of value, putting users of ‘social media’ into a process of class exploitation [Fuchs & Sevignani, 2013, Banet-Weiser, 2012].

But even though this is true, this understanding of digital labour and exploitation hinders our understanding of value-creation processes in today's mediated networked relations of production because of two new conditions within the relations of production:

1: What we call access to media as a means of production. This point will be explained with critical regard to the simple assumption about the ‘Age of Access’ [Rifkin 2001]. We will show, that a conceptualization of media as a means of production allows for a more complex and more diverse production of values.                                         

2: Our understanding of “relations of production” and “means of production” is too narrow both in classical economic theory as well as in materialist-marxist terms. Here, it is impossible to conceive a role of means of production apart from the basic distinction of ownership [have/not have]. We will stress that this confines our cognition of value creation in a way that is inexplicable in todays’ transformation of the media economy. This will be made possible by conceptualizing media as an originary means of production building on Raymond Williams cultural materialism [Williams 1983/1958]; 2013/1961; 2005/1980; Winter 2015]

Based on this we can develop an understanding of a digitally mediated network value creation on the basis of access to means of production, augmenting terms of ownership and non-ownership. It is this very access that opens up new economic, quasi-economic and non-commercial possibilities of innovation and value creation for contemporary actors who were -formerly ‘just’ artists or fans [Negus & Pickering 2004, Grünewald & Haupt 2014]. Based on empirical work in the Berlin music economy, we will show that instead of just consuming use-values, actors with access to new means of production and new possibilities of exchange accumulate, produce, share and transform cultural and social forms of value, making them what could be called ‘neo-capitalists’ [Lin 1999] while at the same time new media relations of production are being constituted. We will explain in detail the role of production of ‘surplus value’ as a production of more use values as well as the transformation of such values [like cultural, social, aesthetic ones] amongst each other. Doing this, we hope to shed some light on the transformative possibilities of digital labour to develop the possibilities for modern marxist critique.

References and Notes

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Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Authentic TM: Politics and Ambivalence in a Brand Culture. Critical Cultural Communication. New York: New York University Press, 2012.

Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2006.

Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson, . 241–58. New York: Greenwood, n.d.

Büscher, Bram, and Jim Igoe. “‘Prosuming’ Conservation? Web 2.0, Nature and the Intensification of Value-Producing Labour in Late Capitalism.” Journal of Consumer Culture 13, no. 3 (November 1, 2013): 283–305. doi:10.1177/1469540513482691.

Engelmann, Maike, Lorenz Grünewald, and Julia Heinrich. “The New Artrepreneur - How Artists Can Thrive on a Networked Music Business.” International Journal of Music Business Research 1, no. 2 (n.d.): 31–45. Accessed February 26, 2015.

Fuchs, Christian, and Sebastian Sevignani. “What Is Digital Labour? What Is Digital Work? What’s Their Difference? And Why Do These Questions Matter for Understanding Social Media?” TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 11, no. 2 (2013): 237–93.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. 1st University of Minnesota Press ed., 2006. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Grünewald, Lorenz, and Joachim Haupt. “Value Creation on Youtube: How Musicians, YouTubers and Commercial Networks Create Social, Cultural and Economic Capital.” Vienna, 2014. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lorenz_Gruenewald2/publication/267393473_Value_Creation_on_YouTube__How_Musicians_YouTubers_and_Commercial_Networks_Create_Social_Cultural_and_Economic_Capital1/links/544e8b910cf26dda089015c7.pdf.

Hamel, Gary. The Future of Management. Harvard Business Press, 2007.

Handke, Christian. The Creative Destruction of Copyright - Innovation in the Record Industry and Digital Copying. SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, June 23, 2010. http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1630343.

Lin, Nan. “Building a Network Theory of Social Capital.” Connections 22, no. 1 (1999): 28–51.

Lull, James. Culture-on-Demand: Communication in a Crisis World. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007.

Marx, Karl. MEW 42. Berlin: Dietz, 1983. http://web.archive.org/web/20060206182838/http://www.hkwm.de/inkrit/framu/bibliothek/grundrisse/MEW42.PDF.

Negus, Keith. Creativity, Communication, and Culture Value. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE, 2004.

Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-for Experience. Auflage: Reprint. New York: Tarcher, 2001.

Tschmuck, Peter. Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012. http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-642-28430-4.

Wikstrom, Patrik. The Music Industry. Auflage: 1. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Williams, Raymond. Culture & Society 1780-1950. New York: New York University Press, 1958.

———. “Means of Communication as Means of Production.” In Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays, 50–67. London: Verso, 2005.

———. The Long Revolution. Auflage: Reprint. Cardigan: Parthian, 2013.

Winter, Carsten. “How Media Prosumers Contribute to Social Innovation in Today’s New Networked Music Culture and Economy.” International Journal of Music Business Research 1, no. 2 (2012): 46–73.

———. “Kommunikationsmedien Als Produktionsmittel – Williams Wichtigster Beitrag Zur Analyse Und Entwicklung von Kultur Und Gesellschaft.” In Über Raymond Williams. Annäherungen. Positionen. Ausblicke, edited by Roman Horak and Monika Seidl. Hamburg: Argument, n.d.

© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI and ISIS. This abstract is distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

In this study, one of the most important concept of the Frankfurt School, culture industry will be analysed by considering the innovations of the digital era. Does new media create a new environment for emancipation and freedom of speech, or does it create even more dependent individuals, who are deceived by their pro-consumer (both producer and consumer) status? It seems like people are unaware that they are still consumers and they are easily adopting to the dominant culture.

Prominent Social Media tools such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other tools restrict users with their own rules and own culture, which limits the freedom. To set an example, Youtube created a culture which totally serves for the consumption culture. V-logs, shopping hauls and make-up suggestion videos are shaping lifestyles and desires of the youth, while abnormalizing the ones who are staying out of it. Video sharing platforms or blogs give voice to ordinary citizens but indeed they serve more for the entertainment, which is an extension of labor under capitalism. Other platforms are not much different than the Youtube, they are all serving for the ruling class. When we have 140 characters to type, we think we have a voice but actually we do not have a chance to decide, we are the actors of an old game who are playing it by the book. Users feel like there is diversity, but indeed all those new media platforms are all variations of the same thing.

Producers still hold the power. People do not spend much money, but they waist a lot of time and they derive a profit for media industry. It is obvious that new media environment hinders people to think and decide, while re-creating the status-quo. Advertisement is also an important aspect of the culture industry, which is prominent in new media. While we are sharing an image of our miss-written name on our coffee cup, we are gaining profit to a company. So is this users creativity or a hidden advertisement? These appreciations will be utilized by considering the works of Thedor W. Adorno’s, Max Horkheimer’s and Frankfurt School’s new generation theorists works.

The research approach to space-time in western tradition is more of a metaphysical way, which is attached to explore the nature of space-time. The representative school of the study of experience of space-time in modern is phenomenology. In ancient china, the issue of space-time is always related to the “Between heaven and man”, which is one of the most basic problem of chinese philosophy.

Since ancient times, discussion on the issue of space-time is mainly focused on such aspects: What is the nature and attribute of the space-time? What is the relationship between space-time and material or it’s movement? What is the relationship between space-time and consiousness? And what is the relationship between space and time?

While, different from the ancient metaphysical research approach,the phenomenological reduction method was applied by Husserl to pursuing an original experience of space-time, which he called the “Intrinsic time consciousness”. In addition to, the other two representatives of phenomenology, Heidegger and merleau-ponty are also studied the problem of space-time.However, no matter husserl’s intrinsic time or Heidegger’s survival time or merleau-ponty’s embodied time, were all paid attention to only one aspect of the genesis and occurance of experience of space-time, and ignored the other aspects.

There are also lots of studies about the issue of space-time in chinese philosophy. From the pre-qin period to the end of the Han dynasty, from Wei-jin period to song dynasty and dynasties of ming and qing, a large number of philosophers had expounded the issue, including Lao-zi, Zhuang-zi, Mo-zi, Wang-bi, Zhu-xi, Zhang-zai, Fang-yizhi, Wang-fuzhi and so on ,they all have different understandings about space-time. The grasp to experience of space-time is more intuitive and fuzzy in chinese philosophy.

Based on the thinking of globalization, informatization, networking, as well as the current situation of human existence, The study found that all of these changes in a certain sense, is the change of space-time form of human existence, and at the same time, such a change is also points to the change of the whole human society. Therefore, the exploration to the most fundamental phenomenon that reflect the change of human society, namely space-time phenomenon, become particularly important.

Through the introduction of the concept of information, the study to the formation of experience of space-time should be dual dimensions. From the prospective of the process and mechanism of the occurrence of current congnition, individual present experience of space-time is emerges from interaction of various phenomena including physical phenomenon, information phenomenon,and phenomena of consciousness. From the perspective of historical genetic mechanisms of congnition, the emergence and development of human experience in space-time is accompanied by its own evolution of structural pattern of physical, mental and behavior. This kind of physiological, psychological, behavioral evolution is a holographic process.

This research project regards the generation of experience of space-time as a continuous and generative process, study with a comprehensive, multi-dimensional perspective rather than a single, one-dimensional perspective, which could deepen the study of temporal and spatial issues, at the same time, rethinking it’s impact on the way of human existence.

References and Notes

1. WU Kun: Philosophy of information—Theory, system and method. The commercial press. 2005.
2. Husserl, E. Zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewuβtseins [1893-1917]. Hsg. von R. Boehm, 1966.
3. Heidegger, M. Being and Time. London: SCM Press LTD, 1962.
4. Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge; 2nd Revised Edition [2002-05-03].

The Internet has been recognized as the perfect symbol of universal association and is able to change the conditions of human existence. It is argued that the establishment of cyberspace as an unlimited space for informational networks affords unrestricted movement in a pure space that is free of friction, ethereal and virtual. As Negroponte pointed out in his influential book, Being Digital, the Internet space guarantees everyone fully express their voices. So, it was said that the Internet, “far from being an institution of control, will on the contrary be an instrument of freedom, promising modern humans the ability to shake off the yoke of bureaucracies” (See [1]). In his The Internet Galaxy, Manuel Castells declares that the Internet “is indeed a technology of freedom”[2]. He argues that the Internet has extraordinary potential for the expression of civil rights, and communication of human values, and provides a new arena for the development of civil society. Jacques Attali even announces that democracy will be electronic and “the political will disappear” thanks to the network (See [1]). The Internet is thus considered to be anti-hierarchical “in essence”, becomes synonymous with self-regulation and equality. If Proudhon were alive today, he would argue that such a positive effect of the Internet is not an autonomous outcome; rather, it could be perverted by political centralization. As the advocate of critical constructivism, Andrew Feenberg asserts that the Internet is “an unfinished technology and a terrain of struggle”[3], so there is indeed a real politics concerning the Internet. As a matter of fact, numerous writers note that the authorities in the real world are trying to structure the order on the Internet, so that the dystopia seems to be a possible prospect. For example, S. Zuboff proposes that the Internet would function as the electronic-information panopticon [4]. Indeed, the government is best positioned to regulate the Internet through controlling its underlying codes and structuring the legal environment in which it operates [5]. Langdon Winner reminds that computer users are in danger to be reduced to the condition of techno-serfs, powerless participants in the Internet who find themselves fully subservient to the new lords of the realm, and that laws that supposedly protect the rights and liberties of citizens are regularly and secretly breached when it suits the purposes of the military-security-industrial matrix [6]. So, there is a sharp opposition between two kind of social images of the Internet, paradise (utopia) vs. panoptican (dystopia). To the authors, the question is not so much how to choose either this or that position as how to think about the complicated co-evolutionary process of the Internet and society.

The experiences of China in development of the Internet provide a unique locus to test the abovementioned thoughts about the political implications of the Internet. As a newly-rising power in the world, China has been experiencing rapid development of the Internet since the later 1980s. According to the survey by CNNIC, by the end of June 2014, China had 632 million Internet users, and the penetrate rate is 46.9%, of all users 527 million are accessing the Internet via cell phones; the proportion of mobile phone usage in netizens grows up to 83.4%, excess the traditional PC usage, which is 80.9%, for the first time, indicating the arrival of the ear of the mobile Internet [7]. Being referred to as the “entertainment superhighway”, the Internet in China also serves as the first public forum for Chinese citizens to freely exchange their ideas. Under background of the centralized political system, the Internet has affected and been affected by the society at the same time. In fact, Chinese leaders and officials at all levels of governments always live in an ambivalent situation in terms of the development of the Internet. On one hand, they need to promote the development of information technology, for “science and technology is the first productive force”; on the other hand, they know clearly that to stimulate the development of the Internet is almost certain to produce such unintended consequences as social protests and the upsurge of collective actions. Therefore, China has established a parallel governance structure: one is used to promote the development of the Internet industry, and the other for the implementation of political control.

As a result, the Internet service in China has faced constant interference by the so-called Great Firewall and the army of online censors [8-10]. As the latest development, Chinese government starts to sell the conception of Cyber-sovereignty to the international society which holds that national governments should have the right to supervise, regulate, and censor all electronic content transmitted within their borders. Therefore, the Internet is certainly not an independent variable, and the politics has made huge differences in the Internet in China. Moreover, in fear of closure, online service providers have to adopt technical means and hire moderators to monitor user-provided content. This kind of censorship and self-censorship has made the Internet in China so different from that in the West. The so-called universal associations through the Internet is still undoubtedly a dream. This situation in China seems to be panopticon in terms of Michel Foucault’s analysis. Indeed, with the development of the Internet, Chinese authorities have been empowered by the Internet, and the censorship on the internet has advanced so superbly that individuals have been under tighter surveillance and control. So the image of the Internet as the panopticon appears to be near to the reality in China [11]. As a revised version of panopticon, Yu came up with the concept of “onlooking prison” to describe the structure of Internet in China, where regulators lose their full control of information resources, and the public is able to monitor the behavior of the “guards” and to have their appeals heard and satisfied [12].

In despite of this, vigorous public debates and participations have still occurred in the Internet space, which has played an increasingly important role in Chinese political lives. Actually, with the new information dissemination mechanism, the Internet has exacerbated social instability by intensifying the zetizen’s perception of the gap between the rhetoric, made by the authorities, and social reality, and by endowing them resources and moral support in collective actions. As a kind of communication platform, the Internet in China has become not only the place for ordinary people to express themselves, but also the place where they can organize themselves for common political appeals. The Internet thus has brought a larger space for civic participation in social-economic-political affairs, and the increasing mass incidents spread online and the public opinion gathering has highlighted the power of civic forces [13-15].

So, with the experiences of China in development of the internet, the author expounds that there is a real politics in the development of the Internet; the Internet is still in an evolutionary process, giving rise to a variety of possibilities, and it seems to be more suitable to speak of “internets” rather than the Internet; the more suitable image of the Internet is laboratory [16] rather than paradise or panopticon. Therefore, the transformation of society mediated by the networks from the closed situation to universal association is not so much an autonomous process as a series of real social-political choices, and that What needed is exactly cosmopolitics with “foresight”, by which a variety of stakeholders of the society participate to discuss and design collectively their common future. Different from forecasting or prediction, the concept of foresight presumes that the future is uncertain and there are more than one possible development path [16], and that which one be realized largely depends on collective projecting in advance. So, through foresight, people can better harness technical networks to serve better the interests of the community. Although we cannot determine the outcome of our choices, but the choices still matter, just as a Chinese old saying, “the planning lies with man, and the outcome with Heaven”. In this regard, to set up a proper political framework to govern the co-evolutionary process of the Internet and society is of especially importance.

The paper is organized as follows: following the Introduction in Section 1, Section 2 analyzes the dynamics of political change in China. Section 3 analyzes what differences the Internet has made in Chinese politics. Section 4 analyzes what differences the Chinese politics has made in the Internet. Section 5 concludes the article with a discussion of the relationship of China and the future of the global information society.

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