Cybernetic Circulation Complex – Book Launch

Big Tech firms dominate the global economy. But what value do they actually produce? In Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis (Verso, 2024), Nick Dyer-Witheford and Alessandra Mularoni argue that the role of firms like Amazon and Google, Palantir and Uber, is in the speeding up and automation of the circulation of commodities. Big Tech aims to subject everything from advertising and shopping, to logistics and financial services to the level of control and predictability that capital has secured in industrial production.

But there is a way out of the multiple crises that Big Tech has helped precipitate. If we are to break their grip on the global economy then it’ll take more than just antitrust legislation or reducing individual time online. What is required instead is a new, ambitious and comprehensive program of democratic collective planning that can move us beyond capitalism and benefit life on earth over profit.

0:00 Introduction and moderated by Rafael Grohmann
2:30 Nick Dyer-Witheford
25:20 Alessandra Mularoni
39:20 discussants Tori and Fergie
1:10:00 audience Q+A