Reading: Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System

In this book, Dan Schiller provides a richly textured account of the evolution and consequences of the Internet .By using a political economy approach, Schiller properly links the Internet to broader political, economic, and social contexts, while recognizes the degree to which new technologies alter the contexts in which they develop.

Schiller’s focus on the market-driven uses of the Internet provides a particularly significant counterpoint to optimistic accounts of this technology and its potential consequences.He cautions that the increasing corporate hegemony over the Internet will serve to deepen consumerism,
exacerbate social inequalities, and extend market-driven logic and techniques to education.

In the chapter I've just finished reading, on American education, Schiller cautions that “cyberspace lent itself both to an unparalleled market takeover of the learning process and to
a relentless vocationalism” (145). Schiller details how a variety of trends increasingly have shaped American education along market lines. Schiller provides a provocative account of the growing number of partnerships between universities and corporations. Attractive to university administrators because of their economic benefits and because of the threat of corporate education, these partnerships often decrease the autonomy of the university. The New Partnership sought two super-ordinate goals: more expeditious commercialization of university research and a closer match-up between what was being taught to students and labor-market needs.