9E. Ostrom (2015 [1990]) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 90.
10See A. Aneesh (2006) Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, esp. pp. 5, 110–32; A. Aneesh (2009) Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of Organization, Sociological Theory, 27(4): 347–70; and J. Danaher (2016) The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation, Philosophy and Technology, 29(3): 245–68. John Danaher calls an algocracy ‘a system in which algorithms are used to collect, collate and organise the data upon which decisions are typically made and to assist in how that data is processed and communicated through the relevant governance system’ (ibid., p. 247); like Danaher, I am particularly interested in ‘the growth in algocratic systems that are based on predictive or descriptive data-mining algorithms’ (ibid.).
11But, for a more thorough, less sensationalistic examination of these serious issues, see the work of Tal Zarsky, including T. Zarsky (2016) The Trouble with Algorithmic Decisions: An Analytic Road Map to Examine Efficiency and Fairness in Automated and Opaque Decision Making, Science, Technology, and Human Values, 41(1): 118–32; T. Zarsky (2012) Automated Prediction: Perception, Law and Policy, Communications of the ACM, 55(9): 33–5; and T. Zarsky (2011) Governmental Data Mining and Its Alternatives, Penn State Law Review, 116(2): 285–330.
12J. Burrell (2016) How the Machine ‘Thinks’: Understanding Opacity in Machine Learning Algorithms, Big Data and Society, 3(1): 1–12, p. 1.
13T. Dietz, E. Ostrom & P. Stern (2003) The Struggle to Govern the Commons, Science, 302(12 December): 1907–12, p. 1908.
14E. Mozorov (2013) The Real Privacy Problem, MIT Technology Review, 116(6): 32–43.
15See, for example, K. Crawford & J. Schultz (2014) Big Data and Due Process: Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms, Boston College Law Review, 55(1): 93–128.
16Although alternative forms of value, such as local currencies, mutual credit systems and time bank currencies, may also be relevant here. See, for example, B. Scott (2016) The Future of Money Depends on Busting Fairy Tales about Its Past, How We Get To Next, 30 March, howwegettonext.com/the-future-of-money-depends-on-busting-the-fairy-tales-you-believe-about-its-past-30cbd90619e0.
17Money is intimately bound up with representation (something that can readily be seen, if we recognise any loan as a kind of qualified delegation of power). Democratising money therefore involves transforming those representational relationships in complex ways.
18M. Diamantopoulos (2012) Breaking out of Co-Operation’s ‘Iron Cage’: From Movement Degeneration to Building a Developmental Movement, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 83(2): 199–214, p. 212.
19AccountAbility (2015) AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard 2015. New York: AccountAbility, p. 19.
20Have you seen that cartoon? You know the one I mean: a guy in tatterdemalion Armani sits in the corona of a camp fire. Facing him are three smudge-faced children. Behind them, a soft fiery mist, suggestive of a post-apocalyptic cityscape. The cartoon’s caption is: ‘Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders.’ Nowadays, there are plenty of people out there who believe, with a passion that overwhelms them, and then often overflows them, that the sole moral duty of any company is to maximise value for its shareholders, within limits set out by law. Even such people should not be afraid of stakeholder mapping. Stakeholder mapping would be a way for them to test their belief. Because if they were right – they’re definitely not – then, every time you mapped the stakeholders of a company, you would come up with the same result: the stakeholders and shareholders are identical. Along the way, you might find other stakeholders, but you would gradually learn how their interests were indirectly served best by directly serving the interests of shareholders. In the cartoon, the three kids are drawn without mouths. That’s just the cartoonist’s style, but I like to think that they have no mouths because there is nothing left to eat and nothing left to say. (The cartoon is by Tom Toro: see www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a16995).
21L. Blanc (1851) Plus de Girondins. Paris: Charles Joubert, p. 92; and K. Marx, (1875 [1977]) Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Selected Writings, ed. D. McLellan: 564–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 569 (translation altered).
22Compare what Lee Anne Fennell calls ‘Ostrom’s Law’: ‘A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory’: L. A. Fennell (2011) Ostrom’s Law: Property Rights in the Commons, International Journal of the Commons, 5(1): 9–27, p. 9.
23‘If algorithms adopt deliberative democratic paradigms, it assumes an Internet of equal agents, rational debate, and emerging consensus positions. This is not the Internet that many of us would recognize’: K. Crawford (2016) Can an Algorithm Be Agonistic? Ten Scenes from Life in Calculated Publics, Science, Technology, and Human Values 41(1): 77–92, p. 87. As an alternative paradigm, Kate Crawford points towards the fascinating idea of a democracy that is both algorithmic and agonistic – in other words, one that recognises ‘that algorithmic decision making is always a contest, one that is choosing from often counterposed perspectives, within a wider sociotechnical field where irrationality, passion, and emotion are expected’: ibid. For more on agonistic democracy, see C. Mouffe (2005) On the Political. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
24So may many of the things we are doing as market participants; see the final footnote.
25Diamantopoulos, Breaking out of Co-Operation’s ‘Iron Cage’, p. 201.
26See J. Pedersen (2008) Habermas’s Method: Rational Reconstruction, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38(4): 457–85.
27Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, p. 1.
28And, in that spirit, let’s end with one last messy, open-ended – and very science fictional – thought experiment: Abiodun’s MarketStarter hobby. The elevator pitch is, of course, ‘Kickstarter, but for markets’. To design a market, you use the platform’s mixing deck functionality. You tailor your market in almost any way imaginable. If you wanted to, you could go down to a fine narrative grain, and specify every single exchange over the entire lifetime of the market. In practice, designers usually concern themselves with more high-level, molar properties. Usually they’re focused on one or two flagship features. ‘This market will slow the gentrification of Easton, and the old Chocolate Factory will be developed as a technology park, not flats.’ ‘This market will create 100 new jobs in the steel industry in Redcar over the next five years.’ OK, it’s designed. Then what? People who want the market to come into existence elect to ‘back’ it, just as on any crowdfunding platform. People who become backers receive credits equal to the money that they pledge. These credits can be spent at face value in ways that conform perfectly to the proposed market. Depending on the design of the particular market, that may or may not still give backers a significant degree of freedom. If backers want to spend their credits in other ways, which partly conform to the market, they can spend them at a discounted value. Part of the cunning of the platform is that it can spot patterns among the different markets proposed by different designers, and suggest to them that they hybridise their markets and pool their support.
Figures
9.1Nodal schematic of the United Regions of England (illustration: Mike Lim)
10.1‘K7’, Novye Cheryomushki
10.2Aerial view of south-west Moscow, around Moscow State University
10.3A stripped Stalinist block, Cheryomushki
10.4Public space in Cheryomushki
10.5Central Economic Mathematical Institute
10.6Infill in Cheryomushki
10.7Belyayevo doorways
10.8A pond in Belyayevo
10.9Chertanovskaya Metro station
10.10Severnoye Chertanovo
10.11Avenue 77
12.1Design fictions set the basis for debates that aim, in turn, to influence our current models
12.2The spe
culative context canvas sets the economic paradigms of the speculated world
12.3The speculative product canvas embodies the values and beliefs of the fictitious context in a real-fictional product
12.4In an economic system suffering from data scarcity, consumers could be protected by a smart antenna detecting traces left by banned data-related activities (illustration: Emmanuelle Roulph)
12.5To help discuss the economic implications of data post-scarcity, this design fiction introduces the infobesity case, a smartphone case with the unique feature of getting fatter the more data are used (illustration: Emmanuelle Roulph)
Contributors
AUDINT is a sonic research unit. Its current members include Toby Heys, Steve Goodman/Kode9, Eleni Ikoniadou, Patrick Defasten and Souzanna Zamfe. Further info can be found at audint.net.
Khairani Barokka is a writer, poet, artist and PhD researcher in visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Published internationally, she is a UNFPA Young Leader Driving Social Change, and has presented work in ten countries. Her work can be found at www.khairanibarokka.com.
Carina Brand is a writer and artist who lectures in Fine Art at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Ha-Joon Chang is an economist and author. He teaches economics at the Faculty of Economics and the Development Studies programme at the University of Cambridge.
Miriam A. Cherry is professor and director of the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University, Missouri.
William Davies is Reader in Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is author of The Happiness Industry and The Limits of Neoliberalism.
Mark Fisher was a writer, political theorist and a lecturer in visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He authored the K-Punk blog on mainstream and underground music.
Dan Gavshon Brady is a strategy director at Wolff Olins, London, and co-founder of the fictional consultancy PostRational.
Owen Hatherley is an author and journalist based in London. He writes about architecture, politics and culture and is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The London Review of Books and New Humanist.
Laura Horn is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University, Denmark.
Tim Jackson is Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity and author of Prosperity without Growth (Routledge 2017).
Mark R. Johnson is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His work focuses primarily on the intersections between play and money, such as eSports, live streaming and fantasy sports, alongside numerous other game studies topics.
Bastien Kerspern is an interaction designer specialising in public innovation. He is the co-founder of design studios Design Friction and Casus Ludi.
Nora O Murchú is a curator and designer based in Ireland. Her practice engages with fictions and narratives to explore how complex socio-technical systems are imagined, built and used. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Limerick.
Justin Pickard is a founding member of research company and consultancy Strange Telemetry.
James Pockson is an architect and studio co-tutor at the Cass School of Architecture at London Metropolitan University, and co-founder of the fictional consultancy PostRational.
Tobias Revell is an artist and Course Leader in MA Interaction Design Communication at the London College of Communication. He is a founding member of research company and consultancy Strange Telemetry.
Judy Thorne is a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester.
Sherryl Vint is a Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where she directs the Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science programme.
Georgina Voss is an anthropologist of technology and innovation systems, an artist, and writer. She is a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication, and a founding member and director of research company and consultancy Strange Telemetry.
Jo Lindsay Walton is a research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities, University of Edinburgh.
Brian Willems is Assistant Professor of Literature and Film Theory at the University of Split, Croatia.
Index
88.7 Stories From The First Transnational Traders (design project, Revell), 285
AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard 2015 diagram, 364
Abiodun (fictional character), 343–55, 359
absorbism, 94, 174–81, 192, 197–201
AccountAbility (firm), 364
activism, 323–5 artistic, 319
of Luddite movement, 329–30, 332
of Occupy movement, 287
adult education, 311–13
adventure novels, 238
Afrofuturism, 75
Akira (film), 118
algocracy, 358–62, 365
algorithms, 149 democratic use of, 366
science fiction on, 150
Allende, Salvador, 82
Alyoshina, Nina, 229
American Civil War, 34–5
Amin, Samir, 101
anthropocene, 26–8
anti-capitalism, xii
anti-technology society, 118
architecture new, 191–6
Soviet, 222, 227
archives, computerized, 77
armed militias, 122–3
artificial intelligence, 106 cultural representations of, 106–8
Asteroid rebellion (against Luddism), 339–40
asymmetric warfare, 126
AUDINT (artist collective), 93, 130
Auger, James, 284
automation communist, 214
economic, 89–92, 150
of manufacturing, 337–8
of revolution, 76–84
of stock market trading, 87–9
utopian views of, 73–4, 76
Automation Serves Man (Merlukov), 215
The Bachelor (television show), 114
Ballard, J.G., xi
banks money creation by, 356
Banks, Iain, 77
Barnes, S. Barry, 81
Barokka, Khairani, 94
Beckert, Jens, 22–3, 26
Belyayevo (microrayon, Moscow), 209, 223–6
Ben Hayoun, Nelly, 288, 290
Berardi, Franco, 15
Bitcoins, 89–92
Black Mirror (Brooker), 108
Black, Fischer, 87–9
blockchain technology, 89–92
body horror (film genre), 115
Bogdanov, Arkady (fictional character), 50
Brand, Carina, 93–4
Brassier, Ray, 84
Brave New World (Huxley), 36–8
Bring the Jubilee (Ward Moore), 34
Brooker, Charlie, 108
Brown, Wendy, 74
Bruzelius, Nils, 240
Byron, Lord George Gordon, 332
Canada, 317
Candy, Stuart, 288
capital constant, 104
capitalism, x, xi–xiii, 13, 59, 119 calculation of value in, 23
convergence with socialism, 20
corporate power in, 43–5, 48
dystopia on, 93–4, 113–17
extraction central in, 96–7, 98–101
individuals in, 197–201
and science fiction, 54, 74–6, 99
utopianism in, 49
Central Economic Mathematical Institute (Moscow), 218–23
Chang, Ha-Joon, 26–8
change automated, 76–82
social, 301
technological, 38–40
Cherry, Miriam, 295–6
child labour, 38–40
Chile automated economic planning in, 82
Chung, Shing Tat, 289
cities science fiction on, 134–5
utopian, 321
Clarke, Arthur, 52
cognitive estrangement, 108
Cold War technological influences
of, 254
collectivity neoliberalist fears of, xi
common ownership, 10
commons, 358, 361
communality new, 174–9, 192–4
Communism automation in, 214
utopianism of, 210
communitarian projects, 290–2
complexity, 367
computer games, 229–35 economic science fiction in, 229–35, 249–52
megastructures in, 205, 229–35, 242–9
computers archives run by, 77
human interaction with, 87
use in economic calculation systems, 6–8, 19
in utopia, 30, 73–4, 76
constant capital concept, 104
cooperative economic systems in science fiction, 51, 54
‘corponations’, 127
corporations dystopia on, 41–2
in contemporary capitalism, 43–5
corporeal extraction, 97, 110–13
counter-performativity, 88
Crary, Jonathan, 106, 113–17
Crawford, Kate, 366
credit money as transfer of, 62, 68
Crime Pays (design project, Houldsworth), 291
critical design, 282–5 examples, 285–93
Croatia, 321
Cronenberg, David, 115
cryptocurrency, 341–2
Cuba revolutionary heritage of, 83
sustainable development in, 319
cultural representations of artificial intelligence, 106–8
of extraction, 93, 96–7, 108–10, 113–17
cybernetics, 80
Cyprus science fiction on, 286
Economic Science Fictions Page 32