Alec Stubbs

We are likely to have immersive virtual reality and ubiquitous augmented reality in the coming decades. At least some people will use extended reality or “the metaverse” to work, play and shop. In order to achieve the best possible versions of this virtual future, however, we will need to learn from three decades of regulating the Internet. The new virtual world cannot consist of walled corporate fiefdoms ruled only by profitmaximization. The interests of workers, consumers and citizens in virtuality require proactive legislation and oversight. This white paper first addresses the central question the metaverse poses, whether virtual life is inherently more alienating and less authentic than face-to-face life experiences. This question is both a philosophical question about the nature of the good life and an empirical question about the accumulating evidence about the impacts of the digital on subjective well-being.

Drawing from the traditions of participatory and economic democracy, this paper develops a normative framework to critique the anti-democratic structure of digital capitalist platforms. It does so in two ways. First, it offers an understanding of digital users’ activity as value-producing for digital capitalist firms. Second, it extends arguments in favor of workplace democracy to digital capitalist firms and their users. By building a case for participatory autonomy, this paper suggests that users ought to have democratic control over the conditions of their digital engagement, including democratic control over data and digital platforms themselves. This paper ends by briefly outlining a series of alternatives to our digital capitalist landscape, namely, a vision for a democratic digital commons.

Automation, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology have become topics of increasing interest in both academia as well as in popular media. The goal of this article is to establish which issues are the most pressing, and what are the underlying causes of the rise of robots. I demonstrate that fears of automation are well supported by current trends of automation as well as the inherent tendency within a capitalist system to automate at the expense of workers and working wages. Additionally, I point to what appears to be a potential evolutionary divide between what Yuval Noah Harari calls the “god” class and the “useless” class. Finally, I discuss how the new role of information as the world’s most valued commodity can either exacerbate this coming divide or liberate society. I present the case that in order to diminish the negative effects we must move beyond the present capitalist economic system, towards one in which economic democracy and the free flow of information thrives.

The aim of this article is to analyze the underlying economic structures which have led to the rise of the tech giants. In their book Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy, economists Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake outline the four fundamental features of the technocapitalist (or what they consider the intangible) economy. Key to the emerging intangible economy, they suggest, are the four “S’s” of this new form of capitalism, viz., scalability, sunkenness, synergies, and spillovers. In the following, I explicate the ways in which, if taken seriously, these four features of the technocapitalist economy tend towards heightened levels of economic centralization and economic inequality as compared to those experienced under industrial capitalism.

This chapter focuses the future of work as it relates to automation, artificial intelligence, the gig economy, and the technologies that will emerge from the so-called “fourth industrial revolution.” The goal here is to analyze the ways in which our modern capitalist economy drives technological development and the ownership structures which are built into our economic and technological relations. Our current ownership structures point to a future of “precariatized” labor, leading to less stable, more automated and more deskilled labor. What this chapter therefore seeks to do is provide an overview of the present predictions concerning the future of work – the likelihood of job automation, the types of jobs that will remain, the skills future workers will need to develop, etc. Furthermore, this chapter also attempts to outline a social theory for the future of work, specifically one which prioritizes the concept of ownership as a necessary component of the future of work. What is ultimately suggested is that, given the current capitalist economy and predictions about the future of work, any post-capitalist vision for the future of work ought to prioritize new forms of ownership, including work ownership, technological ownership, and information ownership.