Michael Seemann
Five Unsettling Questions for Digital Capitalism

The spectre of digital capitalism is haunting not only Europe. And as is fitting for the times we live in, it comes in many shapes and colors: as information capitalism, data capitalism, platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism and cognitive capitalism. This leads me to the unsettling question: is this still capitalism at all? 

According to most of the definitions, capitalism is seen to meet the following five criteria: it is characterized by the antagonism of capital and labor, the fact that economy is controlled by markets, by private ownership of means of production, the dominance of ownership order, as well as the principle of accumulation. In my talk, I will investigate what happens to these criteria in the digital realm.