A Return To Cyberspace Optimism
E-Capitalism. Click Economy. Netocracy. Infoproduction. Media Flows.
Netocrats decide on what products the consumer will ingest, the clicks are purchases of commodities that manufacture consent and refine the advertising that hijacks the consumers desire, feeding the never-ending cycle of corporate refining that distracts and numbs the mind. Total manipulation of the truth through subliminal monopoly, TikTok is the netocrats desired engine of pure attention-resource extraction, churning the revenue of the click economy into the the algorithm; the algocratic rhythm of netocracy.
Welcome To The Internet
Or at least how it is now, it is one the most rapidly shifting economy after all. Shadow economies of piracy, the battle between common use & IP, the inter-mingling between the Cyberspatial & Physical Economy, high amounts of terrorism through DDoS attacks, Infoproduction & AI automation of cliconomic jobs. All of these are examining's of the E-Capitalist economy. We will analyse this click economy & what can be done to create a free space of true technological expression?
Understanding Cliconomics
Online Economics, which we will now be refered to as Cliconomics
The Purchase is the click, indirectly or directly. To click subscribe to a paid service is direct, while to click a link to a website with ads is indirect the website has already recieved its money, it is merely maintaining its side of the deal as to seem appealing to further advertisers. They extract your attention and use it to either spread the attention extraction (pressing the share button) or influence you (doom-scrolling, spreading agendas etc.) This is what the news does, it tries to make you invested the story through attention extracting headlines and starting sentences. Secondly advertising is a form of productive labour, the advertiser pays the adspace a wage as an investment to receive more capital through others seeing advertising and purchasing the product.
Cliconomy cannot be seperated from Physiconomy (Physical Economics) though bizarre lines in the sand can be changed based on the analysis. To view these as objectively separate is deeply misguided. Though one can draw lines in 3 main types: Cyberspatial, Mechanical & Physical. Cyberspatial connections could be an AI art generator, it uses cyberspatial commodities (media) & produces media, which is used to create more media etc. There is no physiconomic aspects (like physiconomic currency such as money) in this flow. Mechanical connections would be a paid for news website: it starts off you clicking on the link the engaging in the currency in cliconomy (attention) and then consuming the media until it says to continue reading you must pay, so you do and by doing so the physiconomic curreny is being used, its a mix of cyberspatial & physical aspects. Physical connections is you going to a bakery and buying some bread.
Infoproduction is the creation of media in anyway, AI art generators is the automation of such infoproduction, companies who lease their Infoproductive AI's are the equivalent of the bourgeois class in physiconomy. Media flows in shares, through word of mouth, through re-use, through remixing, through influence. Media flows indirectly through influence & informing. Media flows are second phase after the infoproduction and continue even after the media has been consumed, the commodity does not belong to you, you have merely rented the infocommodity with your attention. Infoproduction seems to be accelerating as AI seems to improve in leaps daily, infoproduction appears as stream of colourful dye being jetted out into clear water at an increasing speed, it dilutes and spreads at an accelerating speed infecting all through media flows.
Online Monopoly & Freenodes
Like physiconomy, cliconomy suffers from monopoly. Domination of cyberspatial & mechanical regions by restrictive paywalls, smothering alternative places of expression, a profit incentive to give customisation but not total freedom. This is always shown through the premimum & regular features. A race to profit off identity ensues, the premimum features is increased and sometimes the regular; decreased.