Digital Depression: Information Technology and Economic Crisis
Dan Schiller
Abstract
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 shook the idea that advanced information and communications technology (ICT) is solely a source of economic rejuvenation and uplift, instead introducing the world to the once-unthinkable idea of a technological revolution wrapped inside an economic collapse. This book delves into the ways networked systems and ICTs have transformed global capitalism during the so-called Great Recession. It focuses on capitalism's crisis tendencies to confront the contradictory matrix of a technological revolution and economic stagnation making up the current political economy ... More
The financial crisis of 2007–2008 shook the idea that advanced information and communications technology (ICT) is solely a source of economic rejuvenation and uplift, instead introducing the world to the once-unthinkable idea of a technological revolution wrapped inside an economic collapse. This book delves into the ways networked systems and ICTs have transformed global capitalism during the so-called Great Recession. It focuses on capitalism's crisis tendencies to confront the contradictory matrix of a technological revolution and economic stagnation making up the current political economy and demonstrates digital technology's central role in the global political economy. As the book shows, the forces at the core of capitalism—exploitation, commodification, and inequality—are ongoing and accelerating within the networked political economy.
Keywords:
financial crisis,
capitalism,
Great Recession,
information technology,
communications technology,
digital technology,
political economy,
exploitation,
commodification,
inequality
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780252038761 |
| Published to Illinois Scholarship Online: April 2017 |
DOI:10.5406/illinois/9780252038761.001.0001 |
