Economic Science Fictions

by Davies, William;

  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