Tulipomania DotCom - A Critique of the New Economy
An International Conference @ De Balie, Amsterdam, June 2 & 3, 2000 & @ Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, June 4, 2000
--------------------------- General Information: ---------------------------
Program updates and the list of speakers can be found at the conference web site:
http://www.balie.nl/tulipomania
----------------------- How to Register: -----------------------
De Balie Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10 1017 RR Amsterdam
Tel: +31.20.553 51 00 Fax: +31.20.553 51 55
e-mail: balie at balie.nl
Registration Fees: - Day-Tickets: DFL 35,- - Conference Passe Partout: DFL 60,-
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SUMMARIES OF DEBATES
* The New Economy - Premises and Pitfalls
The idea that the global economy has undergone such fundamental changes that it can truly be called "new" has become so widely accepted that it's rarely questioned outside certain academic circles, critical journals and conferences like this one. Cheerleaders on round-the-clock financial news cable channels and naysayers on the streets of Seattle alike often base their opposing positions on platitudes that may have once seemed radical but now have all the shock value of a banner ad: Matter doesn't matter anymore; electronic networks have collapsed time and space; "infomediaries" aside, the middleman is dead; intangible assets are genuinely valuable while tangible assets are merely a burden; in short, the industrial age has finally given way to the information age.
Following the keynote talks, this discussion will focus on the validity of these commonplace assumptions and on a few obvious questions: Where did this idea of a "New Economy" come from? How "new" is this economy, really? To what extent can -- or cannot -- faith in these assumptions make the New Economy a self-fulfilling prophesy?
We'll also want to sort out the winners and losers, their rewards and penalties, whether this latest chapter in economic history represents a very real transformation or simply a mass hallucination.
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* Silicon Valley as a Global Business Model
With the rise of the internet through the last decade, "Silicon Valley" has been transformed from a quirky scattering of suburban areas south of San Francisco into a success story of mythical and global proportions. At last count, over 90 regions world-wide were vying to promote themselves as 70 types of "Silicon" something: alley, valley, vineyard, swamp, seaboard, glen, fen, mesa, plain, gulch, glacier, and even a polder.[1] The implication is that Silicon serves as a magical meta-glue that can bond technical innovation with financial acceleration to produce new potentials.
In this rush to represent diverse regions as jacked into the globalisation's medium par excellence, the only remaining trace of a region's peculiar qualities often seems to be the dominant geological formation appended to Silicon. Gone are any references to the social, cultural, political, and material histories that define the region and its peoples -- the "old" structures that the "new" logic of Siliconia must contend with.
This panel will examine different aspects of these attempts to redefine various entities: urban and suburban development, organisational logic, individual values, and networked environments.
[1] http://www.tbtf.com/siliconia.html
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* Alternative Strategies:
The New Economy is a transnational money machine. The financial markets enable a relatively small number of shareholders to demand ever higher returns on their investments at the expense of virtually all other considerations.
This panel presents a number of initiatives which take the realities of the New Economy as the starting point of their attempts to challenge this machine on behalf of neglected human considerations.
The complexity of this project is reflected in the variety of targets, ranging from individual corporations (Shell, Nike etc.) to transnational institutions (WTO, IMF), from the structure of the financial markets, to the corporate lobbying of the public policy process. The heterogeneity of targets leads to a diversity of strategies. Some advocate radical direct action (Seattle, Washington), others public awareness campaigns (Clean Cloths Campaign, ATTAC), the "infiltration" of corporations through socially responsible investment, and shareholder activism.
The aim of this panel is not just to present the various initiatives, but to critically examine their potentials and pitfalls and find possible synergies among their strategies.
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* Inclusion and Exclusion in the New Economy
The promise of the perfect market on a global scale by the ideologists of the New Economy, bares traces of the old idea that the proliferation of the Internet and digital networking structures, as if by an act of nature, promotes a more egalitarian social and economic system. Networking is considered to provide instant access to information and communication resources, as well instant access to electronic markets world-wide. Implicitly this vision presumes that in principle everybody has equal access to the networks and the on-line databases.
While it is certainly true that digital networking can have tremendous inclusive effects, and can help to diminish the gap between economic, social and cultural centres and peripheries, it remains questionable if this will happen as if by an act of nature. This panel will investigate the new mechanisms of economic and social inclusion and exclusion that are created by the advance of digital networking technology. To what extent does it promote the interests of established dominant economic actors, and what opportunities for new players on the international markets are created? What does the New Economy look like from a "Southern" perspective? What is the experience from day to day practice in creating electronic markets? And what could be the role of politics in this context, is there a need for intervention or rather for laissez-faire?
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* Consumer Rights
The Internet creates a transnational consumer market quite unlike any market that existed before. Transnational transactions via the net not only create the possibility of international niche markets with direct interaction between producers, consumers, and specialised niche intermediaries, they also conjure up countless problems around secure payment systems, the consumers' fear of fraud, and issues of accountabiltity of both producers and intermediaries. Micro payment systems and cyber cash are still promises of the future, therefore the role of credit card companies is crucial in the current stage of development of e-commerce. Yet, there is no clear idea how issues of accountability, privacy, taxation and regulation can be dealt with now, nor how they will be addressed in the future.
In the absence of clear government policies, the role of consumer organisations becomes increasingly important. This panel will discuss existing initiatives to represent consumer interests in the sphere of e-commerce. Some of the crucial issues at stake are: How can accountability be garantueed in the digital domain? Are on-line ordering and home delivery really benefiting consumers? The "No-Service-Economy" of the Net. How is the issue of privacy at stake? What are the possible side-effects of Intellectual Property Laws?
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* Nettocracy - Class Analysis of the Network Society.
Questions formulated by the panellists:
Class? Analysis? In the Networked? Economy?
There is much discussion about a "New (Technology/Internet Enabled) Economy".
Can the old categories of social analysis-class, strata, power--be used or be used in the same way to understand the new dynamics of the New Economy?
Does the New Economy require what could be considered a new sociology?
Is there an electronic class society developing, and, if so, in what ways does it differ from the traditional capitalist class society?
Is money becoming secondary as the basis for social division, to be replaced by "attention" as the new "currency"--as a new medium of "exchange"--as an alternative "commodity" in the new on-line "barter" economy?
Is an "attention" economy a post-capitalist one and if so what are its accompanying social structures?
What happens to identity and systems of law and order if/when the nation-state becomes irrelevant?
What happens to/with democracy in a networked world--is open source guided anarchy scalable?
Do the sorting/indexing processes of an information society rather than the means of production constitute the new sources of social power?
Who controls and rules the virtual world, and what are the deep links of this to the structures of power in the physical world?
What does/would class struggle look like in a "New Economy" world?
Who speaks for whom in an the information society?"
And overall what are we to do?
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* Convergence, Mergers and Monopolies
The panel on Convergence, Mergers and Monopolies has a twofold axis. On the one hand it looks at the dynamics of ICT and media markets, and the way in which old and new media are coming together. On the other on how these media markets are been integrated with commerce markets (a non-benign process often referred to as convergence). The markets involved include Telecom companies, ISP's, Cable operators broadcasting corporations, hardware producers, software companies, television production companies, film producers, on-line content producers, as well as retailers and wholesalers, producers, distributors and advertisers of all kinds of non-media products.
The debate will shed a critical eye at market convergence by unfolding the dichotomies often used to talk about convergence notably domination/liberalisation, content regulation/infrastructure regulation. The question the panel will struggle with is the potential implications of increasing vertical integration at both sides of the Atlantic, both on a regulatory level as well as a conceptual one. Are there in fact differences between the market and policy frameworks in the U.S. and the E.U.? Is it fair to say that we now have one digital economy, where e-communication and e-commerce co-exist? Is there a middleman in such digital economy? What forces distort and form market convergence and the emergent digital economy? What does financial ownership mean in cultural terms? How can this convergence economy be regulated? Should it be regulated at all?
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