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one: on digital utopia, round three. i’ve been reading Benkler’s wealth of networks in the last days, and thinking about an issue that’s been in the back of my head since years ago with Lev Manovich and my first encounters of Manuel Castells’ works. by Benkler’s own account there have thus far been two central claims and critiques about the internet: the liberating effects of the internet, and the decentralization produced by the internet. a third claim and critique has also been rumbling about in the background, and Benkler brings it back into my sight. Benkler’s argument is dependent on the axiom that the internet is the backbone for a substantially different economy, and that as a result the models by which we analyze contemporary ‘networked’ life need to reflect this important difference. To what degree the internet and its related inter-networked networks have in fact changed production, capital, and ultimately economies is a matter of some debate. i agree with Benkler that in networked society cultural production and consumption have changed. However, i doubt – and therefore disagree with – the notion that we have truly left behind the ‘industrial economy’ for the ‘information economy’.

one-point-five: my doubts come from a series of academic and non-academic reflections. first, the way that capital flows has changed substantially; however, the ways in which capital is ultimately produced is perhaps less different that the information-economists would have us believe. in the sense of cultural production the argument for change is clearer, and i think Benkler’s argument holds. my contention is slightly more Marxist in its position: cultural production differs in its relationship to capital, but how that capital is initially created is still primarily industrial capital. what Benkler, Castells, and others are describing then is a kind of new relationship to the superstructure, because in the end capital is firmly linked to a very grounded reality, which is not in the worth of Brittany Spears or the cultural capital of Open Source, but in hard commodities and to a lesser degree the control of their value (and only when the value can be said to be controlled by a fixed number of logical actors). for example, the price of a barrel of oil, its cost to refine and the logistics required to make it to a California SUV is affected by the information economy, but that information economy is wholly dependent upon the industrial economy that is its armature. a war, a clandestine nuclear program, political squabbling, and the emotional sculpting in place from producer to consumer all affect that economy (whatever moniker we give to that economy), but in the end we find ourselves with a very tangible and very old (pre-)industrial relationship to knowledge and value, and not the ephemeral exchange and valuation of knowledge in the sense of cultural production and networked societies.

one-point-seven-five: Benkler and Lessig are both arguing from different angles about the relationship between the information economy and intellectual property (ir). my doubts here have less to with ir than with the assumption that the information economy represents a wholly other economy. as Sassen points out, networked economies are still deeply dependent upon non-networked life, from seemingly superficial services to deeply real conflicts and grounded commodities. losing sight of this is a privilege only a superstructure vision of the world can purchase. it analyzes the way in which the analyzers partake in the production of culture and the transfer of capital. it does not examine the ways in which that capital is dependent upon a very situated, certain, and real industrial economy, or the reality that this economy has shifted away from their (the analyzers) centers of production. and while this shift is in some ways substantial, it is not enough to completely usher out the ‘old’ and bring in a ‘new’ (utopian vision of the) economy. i suggest that the networked information economy is not a wholly different economy inasmuch as it is a kind of meta-economy entirely dependent on the continued functioning of the industrial economy. it is the particular economy of excess.

one-point-nine: i write this in part because while i depend on, earn my keep by, and study this so-called information economy, i am deeply aware that most of the world does not. i am also aware that while my lot in life is luckier than the factory workers in Shenzhen or San Bernardino, the information economy does less to change their position than it does to reinforce and accelerate the growing economic stratification between the workers, the factory owners, consumers, or me (and i am assuming for the moment the existence of classes as such). what i want to do is to expose a small particle of the underlying mendacity behind this discussion of change – real or apparent – that exists in the formulation of an information or industrial economy.

two: it is incredibly difficult to shop for clothes in russia. russian fashion is, shall i say, rather unique. think of over-wrought leather skinned italian women sunning on the shores of Capri, and then realize this outfit based on fake-label discount imports from china, add about a pound of make-up, alcoholism, and an over-weight population and that describes the offerings i have to choose from. my t-shirts are dying, my sweaters slowly enter pill-hell, my jeans fade to white, and my wool trousers suffer from moths. some portion of money i haven’t got will need to be spent on clothes when i get back to the states in a little more than a month.

three: jake rudnitsky has written a piece for the trash periodical the exile titled “Mayonnaise Nation.” rudnitsky is spot-on in describing russia’s bizarre and disgusting love-affair with mayo. i end with a quote:

It starts with a shot of a flaky, delicious-looking croissant in a sunny cafe. A debonair yet authoritive male voice says, “In Paris, they have croissants.” Cut to a cup of espresso and an appetizing sausage flanked by sauerkraut and sweet mustard. “In Rome, they have espresso. In Vienna they have wienerwurst.”

…And finally, the punchline: “In Moscow, we have mayonnaise!”

This isn’t a joke. It’s an ad for Provencal mayonnaise that was running all over Russian TV about a month ago. It shows a fresh salad of beautiful, bright tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs, all glistening after a rinse, and then: the mayonnaise comes cascading down in sensual slow motion. And we’re not talking a dollop of mayo here, folks. Aesthetically, the ad borrowed from a typical American breakfast cereal commercial, only instead of milk splashing down onto Honey Smacks, about a gallon of mayo gets squeezed onto the doomed veggies. And that’s when the announcer proudly tells us how Moscow is famous for its mayonnaise.