Book part: From Shrink Wrap to Services. The Universal Machine and Universal Exchange
Author(s):
Abstract
The shift within digital media from software to
services represents a level of ubiquity above and
beyond that of multimedia, the digital’s relation of
previously-existing forms of media within its binary
system of equivalence, and into the relation of social
relations themselves. In this sense, it both mirrors
and complements the global spread of capitalism,
which also seeks to make both goods and relations
equivalent (but not equal) through the money form.
Tracing this shift, this chapter examines connections
between the development of end-user Software as a
Service and the service economy enabled by mobile
apps like Uber and TaskRabbit to argue that “service”
in this context should be understood as the universal
medium’s extraction of value from the increasingly
universalized process of exchange.
Keywords
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