Documents that crystallized a narrative and moved billions of dollars of capital.
Hype, financial narratives, and self-fulfilling prophecies in surveillance capitalism
The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedented digital powers to extract monopoly rents – perhaps even heralding a new form of Feudalism. This paper draws on the literature on financial narratives to examine the role that such stories play within the form of capitalism that they describe, and what this suggests for the role of “hype” in contemporary capitalism. The same stories that for critical scholars appear as menacing threats of “technofeudalism” or “surveillance capitalism” for investors appear as optimistic stories of promising future returns. By driving financial investments, narratives afford platforms very real social and political powers, enabling them to function as a form of self-fulfilling prophecies. The paper argues for a cultural inflection to the political economy of Big Tech – viewing capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as an expression of a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. This suggests the need for a critical hype studies, geared at deconstructing the narratives undergirding the technological waves of capitalist pursuits, and examining the broader role of hype in coordinating and directing flows of capital within contemporary financialized capitalism.
Capital in the Twenty First Century
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AI Companies Are Buying—And Destroying—Antique Books. Here’s Why.
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Data from the controversial website Sci-Hub reveal that the whole world turns to it for journal articles.
Systems: How the Ultra-Wealthy Think About Money - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
annotations: A propos de la super-implication des super-riches dans la politique américaine
Blog de sciences économiques et sociales de Martin Anota. Traductions, revues de presse.
louisgray.com: The Myth of the Billion Dollar Startup
According to the Wall Street Journal, there are now as many as thirty companies who consider themselves startups valued at a billion dollars or more , based on how much money they’ve raised through pr
8 documentaries that will make you smarter about money
These will keep you entertained and teach you valuable lessons about money and the economy.
THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future
Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider
Welcome. I’m a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I direct the Media Economies Design Lab and teach and learn from our students. I’ve written a book each on online democracy, cooperative enterprise, the Occupy movement, and God, and I’ve edited ones about solidarity economies, crypto, and co-ops. Reporting articles for both magazines and academic journals keeps my notebooks filled. Working with others to build a democratic economy keeps me accountable.
Capture the Citadel | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
As Governments Silence War Critics, Writers Pay the Price
Crackdowns on writers during wartime emerged as a key trend in PEN America's 2025 data gathered for the latest annual Freedom to Write Index.
Living in Data: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Information Future (Paperback)
Jer Thorp’s analysis of the word “data” in 10,325 New York Times stories written between 1984 and 2018 shows a distinct trend: among the words most closely associated with “data,” we find not only its classic companions “information” and “digital,” but also a variety of new neighbors—from “scandal” and “misinformation” to “ethics,” “friends,” and “play.”To live in data in the twenty-first century
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A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial chang…
papers-we-love/papers-we-love
Papers from the computer science community to read and discuss.