B1690 - Digital Policies (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course aims to provide an overview of the major challenges posed by digital technologies today in terms of public governance, data accumulation and labour transformations. Through the analysis of key contemporary critical theories, students will learn to handle concepts and issues in relation to digital infrastructures, surveillance capitalism and platform labour.

Course contents

The course is divided into 10 classes, each of which will focus on a specific topic.

The first part of the course will be devoted to a historical-political genealogy of digital technologies.

In particular, it will focus on the rise and success of platforms as a business model whose consequences, however, also invested the social and political realms.

In the second part we will focus on the spatial features of the digital conceived in its infrastructural, geopolitical and metropolitan dimensions.

In the third part, we will examine how digital technologies - through platform labour and data accumulation - contribute to the definition of new subjects.

Finally, some proposals for the political governance of the digital will be presented and analysed, from cooperativism to socialism 4.0.

Readings/Bibliography

Reference texts

(for the exam, students may choose two of the following books)

• Lindel, The Gentrification of Internet. How to reclaim our future, 2021, University of California Press
• Srnicek, Capitalismo digitale, 2017, Luiss University Press
• Pitron, Inferno digitale. Perché internet, smartphone e social network stanno distruggendo il nostro pianeta, Luiss University Press, 2022
• Bratton, The Stack, MIT Press, 2015
• Cuppini, Metropoli planetaria 4.0, 2023, Meltemi
• Zuboff, Il capitalismo della sorveglianza, 2023, Luiss University Press
• Fuchs, Digital Labour and Karl Marx, 2014, Routledge
• Koopman, How We Became Our Data. A Genealogy Of The Informational Person, 2019, University Of Chicago Press
• Crary, Terra bruciata. Oltre l’era digitale verso un mondo postcapitalista, 2023, Meltemi
• Muldoon, Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech, 2022, Pluto Books

 

In-depth articles

(for the exam, students may choose two of the following papers)

• Englert, Woodcock, Cant, “Digital Workerism: Technology, Platforms, and the Circulation of Workers’ Struggles”, TripleC, 2020, 18, 1, 132-145
• Deibert, Pauly, “Mutual entanglement and complex sovereignty in cyberspace”, in Data Politics. Worlds, Subjects, Rights, 2019, Routledge
• Mezzadra, Cuppini, Frapporti, Pirone, “Il capitalismo nel tempo delle piattaforme. Infrastrutture digitali, nuovi spazi e soggettività algoritmiche”, Rivista italiana di filosofia politica, 2022, 2, 103-124
• Peck, Phillips, “The Platform Conjuncture”, in Sociologica, 2020, 14, 3, 73-99
• Plantin, Lagoze, Edwards, Sandvig, “Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook”. New Media & Society, 2018, 20(1), 293-310
• Narayan, “Platform capitalism and cloud infrastructure: Theorizing a hyper-scalable computing regime”. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2022, 54(5), 911-929
• Bratton, “Hemispherical Stacks: Notes on Multipolar Geopolitics and Planetary-Scale Computation”, 2018
• de Seta, “On the Infrastructural Topology of the Chinese Stack”. International Journal of Communication, 2021, 15, 2669-2692
• Barns, “Negotiating the platform pivot: From participatory digital ecosystems to infrastructures of everyday life”, Geography Compass, 2019, 13, 9, 1-13
• Rossi, “Il valore dell’urbano: la metropoli come piattaforma estrattiva”, in Ultimo miglio, 2023, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli
• Lehuedé, “When friction becomes the norm. Antagonism, discourse and planetary data turbulence”, New media & society, 2022, 1-16
• Miceli, Posada, “The data-production dispositif”, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6, 1-37
• Mezzadra, “Oltre il riconoscimento. Piattaforme digitali e metamorfosi del lavoro”, Filosofia politica, 2021, 3, 487-502
• Huws, “Logged labour: a new paradigm of work organisation?”, WOLG, 2016, 10, 1, 7-26
• Huws, “Capitalism and the Cybertariat. Contradictions of the Digital Economy”, Monthly Review, 2015
• Bifo, “What does Cognitariat Mean? Work, Desire and Depression”, Cultural Studies Review, 2005, 11, 2, 57-63
• Azzellini, Greer, Umney, “Why platform capitalism is not the future of work”. Work in the Global Economy, 2022, 2, 2, 272-289
• Lovink, “The Anatomy of Zoom Fatigue”, Eurozine, 2020
• Scholz, Platform Cooperativism. Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2016
• Morozov, “Digital Socialism? The Calculation Debate in the Age of Big Data”. New Left Review, 2019, 116-117, 33-67

Teaching methods

Each lesson will consider a reference text and two (or more) in-depth articles.

The instructor will present the reference text and, starting from it, will outline the main issues of the topic addressed in the class.

At the end of the presentation, students will be divided into groups, each of which will be assigned an article. The group will have to read and comment on the text and then present it to the class.

In addition, two workshops with external guests will be organized.

Assessment methods

The exam can be conducted in written or oral form.

Students who have attended at least 75 percent of the classes may undertake the final exam in written form by submitting a paper no later than 7 days before the examination. The paper is then to be discussed in person on the day of the exam. The paper, based on the course' bibliography, should be about 4,000 words in length and should develop in an independent and original way - upon agreement with the instructor - one of the topics discussed during the course.

Students who will not have attended the course or who do not wish to undertake the exam in written form may opt for an oral exam based on 2 of the course's reference texts and 2 of the proposed in-depth articles. The choice of texts should be agreed in advance with the instructor.

Office hours

See the website of Maurilio Pirone