Tulipomania DotCom - A Critique of the New Economy

An International Conference @ De Balie, Amsterdam, June 2 & 3, 2000
& @ Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, June 4, 2000

Program updates and the list of speakers can be found at the conference
web site:

http://www.balie.nl/tulipomania

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SUMMARIES OF DEBATES

* The New Economy - Premises and Pitfalls

The idea that the global economy has undergone such fundamental changes
that it can truly be called "new" has become so widely accepted that
it's rarely questioned outside certain academic circles, critical
journals and conferences like this one. Cheerleaders on round-the-clock
financial news cable channels and naysayers on the streets of Seattle
alike often base their opposing positions on platitudes that may have
once seemed radical but now have all the shock value of a banner ad:
Matter doesn't matter anymore; electronic networks have collapsed time
and space; "infomediaries" aside, the middleman is dead; intangible
assets are genuinely valuable while tangible assets are merely a burden;
in short, the industrial age has finally given way to the information
age.

Following the keynote talks, this discussion will focus on the validity
of these commonplace assumptions and on a few obvious questions: Where
did this idea of a "New Economy" come from? How "new" is this economy,
really? To what extent can – or cannot – faith in these assumptions
make the New Economy a self-fulfilling prophesy?

We'll also want to sort out the winners and losers, their rewards and
penalties, whether this latest chapter in economic history represents a
very real transformation or simply a mass hallucination.

* Silicon Valley as a Global Business Model

With the rise of the internet through the last decade, "Silicon Valley"
has been transformed from a quirky scattering of suburban areas south of
San Francisco into a success story of mythical and global proportions.
At last count, over 90 regions world-wide were vying to promote
themselves as 70 types of "Silicon" something: alley, valley, vineyard,
swamp, seaboard, glen, fen, mesa, plain, gulch, glacier, and even a
polder (http://www.tbtf.com/siliconia.html). The implication is that
Silicon serves as a magical meta-glue that can bond technical innovation
with financial acceleration to produce new potentials.

In this rush to represent diverse regions as jacked into the
globalisation's medium par excellence, the only remaining trace of a
region's peculiar qualities often seems to be the dominant geological
formation appended to Silicon. Gone are any references to the social,
cultural, political, and material histories that define the region and
its peoples – the "old" structures that the "new" logic of Siliconia
must contend with.

This panel will examine different aspects of these attempts to redefine
various entities: urban and suburban development, organisational logic,
individual values, and networked environments.

* Alternative Strategies:

The New Economy is a transnational money machine. The financial markets
enable a relatively small number of shareholders to demand ever higher
returns on their investments at the expense of virtually all other
considerations.

This panel presents a number of initiatives which take the realities of
the New Economy as the starting point of their attempts to challenge
this machine on behalf of neglected human considerations.

The complexity of this project is reflected in the variety of targets,
ranging from individual corporations (Shell, Nike etc.) to transnational
institutions (WTO, IMF), from the structure of the financial markets, to
the corporate lobbying of the public policy process. The heterogeneity
of targets leads to a diversity of strategies. Some advocate radical
direct action (Seattle, Washington), others public awareness campaigns
(Clean Cloths Campaign, ATTAC), the "infiltration" of corporations
through socially responsible investment, and shareholder activism.

The aim of this panel is not just to present the various initiatives,
but to critically examine their potentials and pitfalls and find
possible synergies among their strategies.

* Inclusion and Exclusion in the New Economy

The promise of the perfect market on a global scale by the ideologists
of the New Economy, bares traces of the old idea that the proliferation
of the Internet and digital networking structures, as if by an act of
nature, promotes a more egalitarian social and economic system.
Networking is considered to provide instant access to information and
communication resources, as well instant access to electronic markets
world-wide. Implicitly this vision presumes that in principle everybody
has equal access to the networks and the on-line databases.

While it is certainly true that digital networking can have tremendous
inclusive effects, and can help to diminish the gap between economic,
social and cultural centres and peripheries, it remains questionable if
this will happen as if by an act of nature. This panel will investigate
the new mechanisms of economic and social inclusion and exclusion that
are created by the advance of digital networking technology. To what
extent does it promote the interests of established dominant economic
actors, and what opportunities for new players on the international
markets are created? What does the New Economy look like from a
"Southern" perspective? What is the experience from day to day practice
in creating electronic markets? And what could be the role of politics
in this context, is there a need for intervention or rather for laissez-
faire?

* Consumer Rights

The Internet creates a transnational consumer market quite unlike any
market that existed before. Transnational transactions via the net not
only create the possibility of international niche markets with direct
interaction between producers, consumers, and specialised niche
intermediaries, they also conjure up countless problems around secure
payment systems, the consumers' fear of fraud, and issues of
accountabiltity of both producers and intermediaries. Micro payment
systems and cyber cash are still promises of the future, therefore the
role of credit card companies is crucial in the current stage of
development of e-commerce. Yet, there is no clear idea how issues of
accountability, privacy, taxation and regulation can be dealt with now,
nor how they will be addressed in the future.

In the absence of clear government policies, the role of consumer
organisations becomes increasingly important. This panel will discuss
existing initiatives to represent consumer interests in the sphere of e-
commerce. Some of the crucial issues at stake are: How can
accountability be garantueed in the digital domain? Are on-line ordering
and home delivery really benefiting consumers? The "No-Service-Economy"
of the Net. How is the issue of privacy at stake? What are the possible
side-effects of Intellectual Property Laws?

* Nettocracy - Class Analysis of the Network Society.

Questions formulated by the panellists:

Class? Analysis? In the Networked? Economy?

There is much discussion about a "New (Technology/Internet Enabled)
Economy".

Can the old categories of social analysis-class, strata, power–be used
or be used in the same way to understand the new dynamics of the New
Economy?

Does the New Economy require what could be considered a new sociology?

Is there an electronic class society developing, and, if so, in what
ways does it differ from the traditional capitalist class society?

Is money becoming secondary as the basis for social division, to be
replaced by "attention" as the new "currency"–as a new medium of
"exchange"–as an alternative "commodity" in the new on-line "barter"
economy?

Is an "attention" economy a post-capitalist one and if so what are its
accompanying social structures?

What happens to identity and systems of law and order if/when the nation-
state becomes irrelevant?

What happens to/with democracy in a networked world–is open source
guided anarchy scalable?

Do the sorting/indexing processes of an information society rather than
the means of production constitute the new sources of social power?

Who controls and rules the virtual world, and what are the deep links of
this to the structures of power in the physical world?

What does/would class struggle look like in a "New Economy" world?

Who speaks for whom in an the information society?"

And overall what are we to do?

* Convergence, Mergers and Monopolies

The panel on Convergence, Mergers and Monopolies has a twofold axis. On
the one hand it looks at the dynamics of ICT and media markets, and the
way in which old and new media are coming together. On the other on how
these media markets are been integrated with commerce markets (a non-
benign process often referred to as convergence). The markets involved
include Telecom companies, ISP's, Cable operators broadcasting
corporations, hardware producers, software companies, television
production companies, film producers, on-line content producers, as well
as retailers and wholesalers, producers, distributors and advertisers of
all kinds of non-media products.

The debate will shed a critical eye at market convergence by unfolding
the dichotomies often used to talk about convergence notably
domination/liberalisation, content regulation/infrastructure regulation.
The question the panel will struggle with is the potential implications
of increasing vertical integration at both sides of the Atlantic, both
on a regulatory level as well as a conceptual one. Are there in fact
differences between the market and policy frameworks in the U.S. and the
E.U.? Is it fair to say that we now have one digital economy, where e-
communication and e-commerce co-exist? Is there a middleman in such
digital economy? What forces distort and form market convergence and the
emergent digital economy? What does financial ownership mean in cultural
terms? How can this convergence economy be regulated? Should it be
regulated at all?