<nettime> Eduard de Jong: on digital neofeudalism

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: versie voor NTT
Date: 2018-03-28 21:11
From: Eduard Karel de Jong <eduard@dejongfrz.nl>

Thought on reading 
https://www.eurozine.com/collective-responses-to-digital-neofeudalism/

It seems yet an other example of the effects of an exponential system.
An exponential system requires exponentially more  resources, both in
material as in investment. It also needs to generate exponentially
more revenues to acquire these resources.

The world is finite, it
can't accommodate an exponential system. The silicon tech adepts have
always looked at the technology as its limit to this exponential growth, 
the
"end of Moore's Law' meme. A limit exist also on the many resources
being consumed and such a limit may pop up and slow down and eventually
stop the growth. That's the way nature handles any exponential system.

The 2008 crises has been a very nice bonus to the needs for capital as
it has allowed to recirculate the exponentially increasing profits
into the increasing need for investments without paying for it with
the negative interest.

The statements about the future of the internet in the nineties were
more based on the human comprehension of a non-linear system, like a
quadratic growth as per the network effect. In a quadratic growth
model the internet could be free, indeed.

For a while a quadratic or cubic polynomial model seems to work:
it fits observed developments neatly.such is the nature of en 
exponential.
The underlying exponential model is faster though and at some point
in time the old predictions no longer match.
That change appears very sudden as at that point in time the speed of
change is also way faster than expected, and the human mind scrambles
to come up with yet another polynomial model to describe the
expectations in the next round. Rinse and repeat...

Also, in this exponential silicon chip system an exponentially
reducing smaller number of human can be in control.  And, since
exponential systems are beyond human comprehension, though not as a
mathematic concept, everyone is always too late to notice the havoc it
has wrought...
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