By Ivan Gomez.
The informational revolution has an acentric scope, although, the research and development of computers and other information processes started in OECD countries in general and in the United States especifically circa 1940.
It seeks as the other technological shifts before to transform socio-economic structures in ways where information becomes vital for an economic sector (agriculture, industry or services) as well as for every aspect of everyday people’s life such as production and consumption giving rise to the informatization of society.
Informatization becomes more important than commoditization in late Capitalism as price maximization depends ultimately on accurate, on-time information about markets conditions.
Digital information does not produce a negative effect on evironment other than the non renewable sources that have been used to produce it such as oil or nuclear energy.
Information unlike capital has a neutral base and it does not necessarily produce patterns of inclusion and exclusion and it pretty much depends on the access of the means of communication.
The power it provides is further volatile than the power of owning a physical asset as information expires or gets outdated and it does not reproduce itself in the same way Capitalism does through the appropriation of surplus value.
It is utterly difficult to keep exclusive control over information in the informational era and leaks are inevitable.
Commoditization vs Informatization
Claims that information is a commodity are false for the reasons I have stated above but primarily because information as much as knowledge are free sources that exist only for as long as they are shared and modified along the way.
What might be commoditized in any case is the access to certain knowledge and certain information and not information per se.
In a transactional exchange, information unlike commodities is not given away since the transmitter keeps this information and merely extends the access to a receiver or to a number of receivers. However, the transmitter has the power to include or exclude receivers according to certain patterns being commoditization or the economic trade of the access one possibility among others such as endogamy or merit based on any criteria and not necessarily economic (loyalty, non-commoditized work, interest) among others.
In the informational capitalist era, corporations use information for capitalist reproduction processes through proprietary software or closed source software in an attempt to license certain technical information or of any other sort under the patent provided by a political or administrative authority such as the state in order to deter information appropriation during a given period as well as to shape a sense of property through the impossibility of that information to be modified through crowdsourcing methods.
In late Capitalism, information is used as a commodity, however, it does not bode well with commoditization in the same way goods and services were once commoditized and the capitalist framework is finding difficulties to keep its commoditization expansion into information. Why? Because, in order to be treated as a regular commodity, information should be produced through in a classical production scheme involving at least labor or raw materials in the combination of these three: capital, work and raw materials.
Whereas in physical assets, it normally requires capital to acquire the raw materials and pay for work that transform those raw materials. These are sold in markets for a higher price than the total cost of the production factors producing a margin which is the profit that is appropriated by the Capital.
On the other hand, in services, capital pays for work to carry out a physical or intellectual action that fulfills the requirements of the buyer of the service and the price gets also higher than the total costs assumed by the Capital.
In both cases, there is accountancy of the units produced and sold. For example: one T-shirt or one taxi ride. This accountancy allows for easy price setting in markets as well as for easier measurement of costs.
However, information processing and communication, on its side, lack most of the times of factors such as labor since more and more information processing is automatized carried out by machines (computers) as well as communication itself which is operated through electronic channels such as the internet. The only part where humans intervene in information processing is at the point when we transform analogic inputs into digital inputs (writing, audio, video) and viceversa (printers and 3-D printers).
The lack of labor reduces quantitavely the final economic value and, unlike commodities, its market value gets reduced the more digital copies or information transfer takes place after the first release to the world audience through the internet. A clear example of this can be found in artistic information such as e-books where the exit price is many times lower than the analog book in part because of the savings on paper, ink and other raw materials, etc.
E-books, however, entailed less intermediation and normally get published soon after the author has finished it and avoids any raw materials or extra work to be published.
Other examples are audio or video formats that are transformed from analog formats such as CD’s or DVD’s into digital formats on the internet. We find that the analog’s copy structure included: the cost of the CD or DVD support (technology patents included + the raw materials), the edition of the CD at a first line edition enterprise plus the cannon and copy rights of the author of the content in the CD. Once that is illegally loaded on the internet, it becomes free to be download most of the times eliminating all analog costs and the author’s copy rights on the way, thus, turning the content into non-lucrative information.
In the Informational Capitalist era we are in, most information resources on the internet are used as a lure to redirect followers, customers or viewers back to the commoditization capitalist process through “targeted publicity” for which internet companies compile specific information about the users’ interests through subtle ways such as visited websites tracking or current interactions such as downloads or information uploading in social networks including personal photos and videos, posted comments, etc.
The shrinking distance between the producer and the consumer is being clearly seen at the beginning of the 21st century.
All these tendencies project a future in which the total technological disintermediation can happen in which people will be able to produce nearly everything from food to any other goods by simply logging on the internet and downloading digital material such as maps that will feed powerful “3-D printers” to create nearly anything without any capital involved. That could perfectly be the end of the Capitalist era and the beginning of a post-capitalist era in which knowledge is universally produced and shared through crowdsourcing networks, while, consumption, at the other tip of the communication cord will be done locally. Capitalism will cease to be the dominant socio-economic system.
Iván Gómez.
